


Tempt You Toward the Flood

by triedunture



Category: Good Omens (TV) RPF
Genre: (except not forced at all), (except not really public), Barebacking, Consensual Non-Consent, Coronavirus Quarantine, Creampie, Dirty Talk, Exhibitionism, First Time Bottoming, Forced Feminization, Frottage, Gangbang, Gangbang Fantasy, Genderfuck, M/M, Makeup, Mutual Masturbation, Nude Photos, Public Humiliation, RPF, Restraints, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Roleplay, Sloppy Makeouts, Webcam/Video Chat Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2020-12-21 04:33:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21068915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triedunture/pseuds/triedunture
Summary: David and Michael get to talking about their younger, wilder days and David shares a fantasy he's always wanted to try...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Завлечёт тебя к волне (Tempt You Toward the Flood)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24035701) by [bangbangbaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bangbangbaby/pseuds/bangbangbaby), [stary_melnik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stary_melnik/pseuds/stary_melnik)

> Look, I know. I am ALSO disappointed in myself. But you're the one who clicked on it, buddy.
> 
> To all the slags who made this happen <3

"Look at that mouth, you right slut," Michael laughs, waving his mobile in David's face. "What did you do, go through a whole tube of cherry lip gloss every week?"

David sputters. "Oh! Oh, you're one to talk!" He's got his own phone out now, furiously googling, which, for David, involves the slowest one-fingered typing possible. "Where's that one of you? Absolutely indecent—hold on, let me find it."

Michael takes another sip of his drink—scotch, of all things. Not his usual choice but it was what David's hotel room had stocked for him. It's been a long day of travel and a longer shoot (piss and shit, these bloody photo things). A quick nightcap, they'd agreed, just to blow off some steam, relax a bit. But of course one drink turned into two, which turned into more, and now Michael doesn't want to leave. Can't make himself get up and return to his own room, identical to this one in every way except it wouldn't have David in it. 

David, who, Michael was quick to point out, had been the subject of some ludicrously slutty photoshoots in his time. 

The conversation had led them here: laughing over their old publicity stills, rolling off the sofa to slump onto the sitting room carpet, staying on the floor because the drink was very strong and standing was liable to cause a head-spin. It's one of those nights where Michael feels he's achieved the perfect level of drunkenness: a soft, filmy quality over the whole world, perfectly possible to sit shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip with someone you genuinely like working with, someone you genuinely like as a person, and allow the fondness you feel for him and his stupid fucking typing skills to wash over you. 

He grins widely at David's profile as he taps one-fingered through search results with a delighted look on his face. "How are these all you? Bloody chameleon. Ah, this one!" He shoves the mobile into Michael's face. "How many necklaces have you got on there? You look like you're about to cover an Oasis song."

"It was fashion!" Michael gasps, faux-affronted. He launches his next volley, tapping away at the search box until the internet spits out a photo he's looked at, well, probably more than should be mentioned. He holds it up in triumph. "At least I never sported that hairstyle. Look at that, topless and draped over the furniture like a rentboy. How much did Young David charge for a trip to the back alley, hm?"

David laughs, says almost too casually, "Well sure, I sucked a few cocks; who hadn't in those days?" He uses the hand that's holding his drink to point at Michael. 

It is only years of professional discipline that keep him from choking on a mouthful of scotch. "Oh, of course," Michael says, just as casually. "Who among us could cast the first stone?" He's not joking; he'd had his wild times when he was younger. But he's not exactly sure if David is being serious. 

They drink in silence for a long moment before Michael smacks his lips and says, "Just out of curiosity, how many cocks?"

"Ah." David's getting a little bashful, all red down his neck. He toys with his glass in his lap, one long leg jangling up and down. "What a question."

Michael backpedals. "You don't have to say, really. I'm just giving you a hard time. Having a laugh, aren't we?"

David tosses back the last of his drink.

Gropes above their heads for the bottle, which had rolled between the sofa cushions. 

Refills his tumbler, drinks that down too.

And then finally says, "Not as many as I wanted, if I'm honest." His eyes meet Michael's, and for a very stupid moment, Michael wonders which twentysomething cocks in particular he'd wanted to suck but hadn't.

Best not think too hard on that. Michael puts a tiny half-inch of distance between their shoulders. "Really?" he says, trying to sound unaffected and failing.

David leans back into him, closing the gap, shoulders back against each other. "Yeah."

"How so?" Michael holds out his near-empty glass, and David gallantly pours for him.

"Well…" They sip as David talks with a faraway look in his eyes. "I was young, you know? Thought about it, wanted to try it—with guys, I mean. Nothing serious, never any further than a fumble or letting them use my mouth."

Something inside Michael squirms at that. It doesn't take much imagination, David on his knees like that. That'll be good wanking material for at least a month.

David continues, "But then life got a little crazy, didn't it? I started getting more and more work, started getting recognizable. Had to put a stop to all that nonsense, right? Can't be seen coming out of the toilet with another bloke and your hair a mess, not if you want to be Hamlet."

"Hmm." Michael takes a very big sip of his drink. He had very fond memories of being fucked in the dressing room during his own turn at Hamlet. Not that David needed to know that; wouldn't want the dear to feel judged. 

David laughs a bit, shakes his head. "Definitely couldn't keep that up, and very much definitely couldn't do the sort of things I really wanted to do."

"Which was?" Michael chugs the rest of the single malt—a sin, really—and sets the glass aside. 

He only gets a chagrined look and a blush in answer.

"Oh, come on," Michael cajoles. "Now you have to tell me."

David keeps shaking his head. "Nah, it's too, ugh. Filthy."

So Michael offers a little olive branch. "Let me tell you: I had some fairly wild nights when I was a younger and, erm, more limber man."

David perks up at that, brows drawn together. "Doing what?"

"There was this guy. Back in uni." He wishes he still had a glass to fiddle with, but he keeps his hands flat on the carpet out of sheer will. "Just a short stint, really, the two of us. He liked to be spanked, slapped around, that sort of thing."

David's eyes go wide. "You're into that stuff, then?"

"Well, not— I mean, I did it because he got off on it. I didn't _ hate _ it; I was rather good at it I think…. But sometimes you do things to please the other person, don't you?"

David gives a sort of distracted nod, turns back to his drink, but he's just holding the glass like he's too focused on what Michael's just said to sip from it.

And at last he blurts out, "A whole pack of men."

"Pardon?" Michael says.

"A whole lot. Of men. Being with them, I mean. All at once or, erm, one right after the other." David shrugs, turning back to him. "That's what I always wanted to try." Gives a weak laugh.

Michael is speechless. Fuck professional detachment; his mouth is hanging open because how can he not picture it? It is very easy to picture. And very affecting.

David must take this silence as judgment, because he hurries to say, "As a fantasy, I mean! Just, I'd never actually— You were there, back in the '80s and '90s. No way would you ever really go for it. I didn't have a death wish."

And Michael rushes to assure him. "No, no, I get it. Perfectly natural, wanting something you're not supposed to have. The...forbidden."

They share a long stare.

Then they both look away at the same time. David sips at his drink.

Michael is wracking his brain for ways to make a joke out of this, but then David elaborates: "I've never told anyone about that. Seemed silly, asking for someone to...pretend with me."

"It's not silly!" 

"It is, a bit."

"It's a simple enough request, I think. If someone wanted to please you, I mean, it would be what? A little dirty talk, a tiny bit rough? That's not difficult!"

David licks his lips and says, "Well. There's one more thing. And it's— It could be difficult, actually." He swallows and stares ahead at the TV which is not even on, just a deep black void on the wall.

Michael raises his eyebrows. Waits.

It doesn't take long. "I would make a fuss— I'd say 'don't do that, stop' but I wouldn't mean it, you know? I'd want it to keep going even while I'm saying I don't."

"You would be begging." It is not a question.

A very quick sideways glance. "Suppose I would be." A moment passes. Then he laughs a little, shakes his head, makes to stand from where they're slumped back against the couch on the floor.

"Too old for that kind of thing now. Oh well, time marches on."

Michael reaches out, touches his hand, doesn't even grab it, but David stays where he's sitting anyway.

"I don't think you're too old," he says.

And he just waits. Because he's not going to be the one to say it. If it's going to happen, it's got to be because David asked him for it.

David finally asks. Says, "Would you? Would you do something like that?" 

"I might," Michael says. Carefully. "For the right person. It sounds— Fuck, it sounds good, the way you describe it."

"Would you do it," David drops his gaze, "for me?"

And that's all it takes. Michael is already reaching for his hair and he tugs his head back around so they can kiss. It's not a very elegant kiss, they're both slow and stumbly, they've been drinking but David makes this noise like he can't believe he gets to kiss Michael and it just makes Michael kiss him harder.

David's long fingers are picking away at Michael's shirt buttons already, already reaching under the hem for skin, touching the swell of his heaving belly and cupping his prick through his pants, and Michael doesn't want to stop kissing him but he really needs to be sure this is okay, so he pulls away and asks, "When you tell me to stop, if you really do mean it—?"

"I'll tell you I really mean it," David says, like it's simple, like he trusts Michael to do this right. 

So, fine. No twee special word, no hand signal. 

"You'll say 'I really mean it' and that will be it?" Michael feels it's the responsible thing to do, to just confirm. 

David nods so hard his head's liable to fall off. "And you'll really fuck me? A proper fuck, and you'll talk like there's going to be a whole line of other men—?"

Michael bites a crescent into David's hot, red throat. "But there is, David. They're queued up in the hall; I told them you'd be up for it, and look. Didn't need convincing; you're just that sort, aren't you?" 

David is _ shaking_. "Ah, you've—we're starting already?" 

"We started the moment you told me about how you sucked all those cocks in pub washroom stalls, sweetheart." He touches David, feels how hard he is already, how wet he's going through his trousers.

He peels him, shirt first, then the jeans down his skinny legs. David helps him along, eager to be bare even though his voice is full of trepidation. "But I've never— That's as far as I've gone with men, I don't know if I—" 

"Oh, you'll do beautifully. I can tell." Michael strokes a thumb across his hot cheek and for a moment, a very still moment, it's not pretend. They stare at each other, chests working like bellows, David sprawled out naked on the carpet, cock red and arching up to his navel. This part, Michael thinks, is very much not an act. 

"You'll be wonderful," he says, and then nudges David's long legs further apart, settling into the wide V.

There's so much he wants to do to David: he wants to eat his ass, wants to press bruises into those narrow hips, could spend a week just pulling his hair into wild peaks. Decides to start somewhere within walking distance of David's comfort level.

"How long has it been?" he asks, pulling himself out of his zipper, no time to undress. "You still remember how to suck someone off?"

David doesn't answer, and his eyes are glazed in a way that would worry Michael—have they had too much to drink after all?—except David rolls over into his hands and knees with more grace than most sober men could manage, and he crawls to Michael to take his cock in his mouth. 

That mouth. Michael tips his head back, thinking about the photos of the younger David he'd stared at. What was it David had said? Something about letting blokes use him...?

He puts a hand on the crown of that bobbing head and brings it to a stop, just the tip held between warm lips. Liquid brown eyes gazing up at him. There's the begging.

"Stay there for me, there's a dear." Michael says, and fucks David's mouth in long, slow thrusts.

Here's the problem: it's so good. Too good. Too much, the way David closes his eyes in bliss, the way he takes what he's given, the plush suction of his mouth, the drool his lets leak from the corner of his lips. 

Michael won't be able to last long at this rate.

"You're going to make me come down your throat," he hisses, "but I still need to fuck you, don't I?" 

David whines around him. His shoulder is jumping up and down, and Michael realizes he's reached under himself to jerk off. 

"Come on, you beauty." He pulls David off his dick by the hair, strands of spit still connecting them, David's mouth all raw and red and fucked slack. "On your back where I want you."

There's the usual negotiations of limbs and lube ("D'you have anything...?" "Yeah over by the—") before Michael can get back into it, one finger slicked and pressed to the second knuckle into David, and David spreading his legs and clutching at the carpet beneath him and making such sounds.

"Won't need to open you much," Michael says, even though he really will; David's as tight as a vise. "Won't matter in a bit. You'll be fucked so many times, I'll be able to slide right in."

David stifles a cry, clapping a palm over his mouth. Okay, Michael thinks. On the right track. 

He adds a second finger, presses deeper. "I should take my time with you, but the other lads'll be banging on the door soon, I reckon. They all want their turn, they're not about to let me have all the fun."

"N-no," David chokes out. "Don't let them— I haven't done this before, there's too many of them, I can't— Not at the start, it'll be too much."

It's a lot like acting, picking up on David's cues, filling in his blanks. Michael twists his fingers. 

"Want me to go first?" he asks. "Make sure you're ready? They might be too rough with you, is that it?"

"Fuck, yes, I want you first," David babbles. "I want you."

"You think I'll be gentle?" Michael is prodding now, asking for hints. Tell me where we're going, he says with eyes only.

David does vulnerability very well. Like no one else. Thin arms curled into his chest, eyes dark as they stare up at Michael. "No," he whispers. "Not gentle. But you'll be able to control yourself better, won't you?"

A strange sort of pride wells in Michael's middle. "That's right." His fingers go deep, draw out a gasp. "I need to make sure you're in one piece. Because when I'm finished, you'll still have a lot of blokes to see to. You'll be no good to us broken." 

"H-how many?" Christ, are those actual tears standing in his eyes? "How many did you tell to come?"

"Don't worry, my beauty." Michael grabs one knobbly knee, draws it up and kisses it. "Just as many as you'll be able to handle."

"But what if they—?" David moans, low and desperate. "They might take pictures, fuck, or video. I can't let that get out, I can't let people see!"

Michael's fingers pause inside. This is a tricky bit. He wants to tread carefully. That sounds like real fear in his voice, but David is the one who brought it up so....

"You should have thought of that before you decided to whore yourself out," he says, edging on a snarl. He plunges his fingers in and out of David's hole, making him shout. "Did you think you could keep this a secret? Did you think you could get away with being the worst little slag I've ever seen, and no one would ever find out?"

David's back arches off the carpet. His hard prick flexes, untouched, leaking a glob of clear fluid onto his belly. "Fuck," he whines. "Fuck, please—"

Okay. So shame works, then.

"Of course they'll take your picture, of course they'll take video. They'll be wanking off to it for the rest of their lives. They'll want to show it to all their mates. 'You won't believe who let us gang him into the ground last weekend, lads.' Hell, they'll probably take you out on the balcony, bend you over the railing, fuck you until you scream so everyone in the bloody carpark sees—"

"If you don't get inside me right now—!"

Michael nearly laughs at David's desperation, because it is rather funny. As if Michael doesn't want to be inside him just as badly, as if he could wait a second longer. He withdraws his fingers, knee-walks a little closer, lining up the fat head of his prick to that tight, wet hole. 

"Ah, condoms?" he asks, feeling stupid to have forgotten. 

"Do we need one?" David asks, blinking up at him. 

"Well—"

"If you want one, of course—" He hesitates, biting his lip. "I'd rather not, though. But, up to you."

"You'd rather—?"

"Yeah, it's fine." David breathes a little harder. His eyes are bright. "Just promise me you'll pull out before you finish."

"That's...not how it…." Michael stops. Watches David's face closely. That pink, wanting mouth. He understands, he thinks. "All right," he says, and pushes inside bare.

There is a kind of luxury in being fully clothed, just a few shirt buttons undone, while fucking a naked David. Michael can touch all the skin he wants, and he does. Palms his little, flat nipples, gives his cock a passing tug, finally gets his hands on those skinny hips and uses them to drag David further onto his prick. 

"Fuck, you weren't kidding," he bites out between clenched teeth. "You're a tight one."

David seems past speech, his whole face squeezed in rapture, his knees rising to bracket Michael's ribs. 

"Look at you." He tries to go slow, to last. He grabs a handful of David's hair and jerks his head back to expose his throat, lick a stripe up it. "You were gagging for it, weren't you? Wanted it so badly, this thing you couldn't have."

David butts his head against Michael's fist like a kitten asking for more petting, so Michael pulls harder, and David clenches around him like a trap.

"God, you're gorgeous." It's hard to remember his lines. Hard to pick up the thread, when David's moaning like that. "So glad I get to break you in for the rest of them. Think I'll watch once I'm done, see how they get on with you. Watch them all take a turn, fucking you raw the way you like."

David's hands scrabble at his back, clutching like he's trying to get closer than they already are. Michael buries his face where David's neck and shoulder meet, gives that pale, freckled skin a little pash rash.

"Once they're all done fucking you," he whispers into David's ear, "enough time'll have passed, there's so many of them, I'll be ready for another go. Would you like that? Start and end on my cock?"

"Yes," David chokes out. "I want that."

"Course you do. Can't help yourself." Michael's pounding away in earnest now, hips working with a purpose. His back will not be happy later; he's pretty sure there will be twinges far into next week. Small price to pay.

"Come here, sweetheart, let me—" He puts a hand behind David's knee, hikes it up higher, fucks him deeper. "Let's see you come. Need you nice and pliant for the boys. Come on." His other hand goes between them, wrapping around David's cock, massaging more than jerking with how little space there is to work. They're mashed together, skin sticking on skin, obscene squelching sounds where he's fucking into David as smoothly as he can.

David comes with a soft cry, barely audible even with his lips right to Michael's ear, his whole long body going rigid in his hold. Warmth floods between their stomachs as the smell of come fills the room.

Then David goes lax, head lolling back to thunk on the carpet, his arms and legs releasing Michael from their cage. He's boneless, belly spattered in his own come, ragged mess of a man.

Michael loves him. No choice in the matter. He fucks into the languid sprawl of his body and feels his own orgasm approaching like a freight train.

"Oh, you beauty," he says, staring down at David. "Oh, I'm going to—"

David opens his eyes, blinks a few times. "Wha—? No, wait…"

"Can't wait," Michael says, and prays he's got the right end of the stick. "I can't stop now. You feel too good."

David stares up at him, mouth open in shock. "You promised. You can't— Not inside, no one's ever— Please, not inside me!" His hands grip Michael's hips, but instead of pushing him away, they cling there, desperate and digging.

Michael takes his wrists and pins them to the carpet. That wrings a helpless cry from David, who struggles beneath him. The panic in his eyes—it punches through the gut, that does. It's so wrong, but it feels too good.

Michael groans, long, loud, and empties himself into the hot clench of David's body. He releases David's wrists so he can grab hold of his legs, keep them hiked up and spread wide, so he can fuck his come deeper into that tight body.

"No, fuck, stop," David pleads. His voice goes thready and quiet. "It's— Oh God. " He covers his face with his hands. Trembling beneath Michael, whimpering with every push of the cock inside him.

"So good," Michael breathes. "Oh, you're going to be so wet and ready for the next one." He bends to kiss David's jumping pulse in his neck. "Might as well have them all finish in you now. Fuck, you'll be such a mess when I have you at the end."

David lowers his hands just enough that his eyes are visible: red, terribly red, and wet. Tears are smeared across them and Michael's stomach fucking drops.

"David? Oh my Lord, David." He's still inside him, still pulsing out the last bit of come, so it's too late for that; he can only struggle to get his arms around David, to try and fix whatever's wrong. "You didn't say you meant it, I thought you wanted me to—"

David's hands fall away from his mouth to reveal a wide grin. "Heh, sorry," he croaks, voice as wrecked as the rest of him. "Think I got...carried away. A bit. Mmm." He shifts against Michael's body. "Fuck, I'm brimming, aren't I?"

"Bastard," Michael laughs, pushing David's smiling face into the carpet. "What were you going for, a fucking BAFTA? Nearly gave me a heart attack!"

David seems weak as a kitten, or just content to lie under Michael, covered in come, because he doesn't defend himself. 

"Nice to know you care," he says, smiling like a fool still.

"Of course I care! You're—" Michael pauses. Feels his soft cock slip free of David's hole. Doesn't move otherwise, their bodies still pressed together. He gentles a stray strand of hair off David's brow. "Well. Glad you enjoyed yourself."

David pulls him down so they can lay against each other, his cheek pillowed on Michael's chest. The hairs there must tickle, but he doesn't move. Just snuggles closer. Could get up and get to a proper bed, Michael muses, but that would involve getting up, and neither one of them seems ready for that.

"You know," Michael says after a moment, "if you ever wanted to do this again...."

David yawns, tries to talk through it. "Yeah, more props for sure." The yawn ends and he settles back down. "Maybe a blindfold. That way you could pretend to be a few different people."

Right. That's two jumps ahead of what Michael was asking but he can roll with it. "Do you want me to do different voices?" 

David raises his head and turns it to give him a look that's mostly disappointment. 

"You're a professional, aren't you?" he says, and goes back to using Michael as a pillow. "Although before the blindfold goes on," he murmurs, "maybe let me see you without your togs."

"Fair," says Michael, and dozes off along with him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well!!! I am surely going to hell. But I'm taking y'all with me.

After that first time—that only time—there's a long stretch of months where nothing else happens.

It's not that there isn't the desire to have something happen; Michael can see it in a glance from David as they're seated side by side at an interview table, or read something of it in the restrained way he texts in full sentences, never after 9pm local time because apparently that's presumptuous, bless him—but life is just so bloody busy. There's not a spare moment like the last one where they could spend a night doing whatever it is they did.

Fuck, Michael thinks the word forcefully. Where they could fuck. 

He thinks about it often enough. It's the only vision he brain seems able to conjure at night, hand around his dick, replaying the sounds David made on the hotel floor. The little whines, the breathy cries. The way his whole body tightened like a taxed muscle when he came. The tired smile, the beads of sweat at his temple.

Strangely it's the smile that so often pushes him over the edge. Makes him come on the shower tiles, or into the bed linens, or (on one very memorable, ill-advised occasion) in a wad of tissue in a single stall airport restroom during a long layover. 

He'd sent David a text after that. "Thinking of you. How are you doing?" Nothing salacious. (David's too careful these days; he told Michael long before they ever kissed, his brogue coming out in force as he heated up at the memory: "Not going through that sort of shit ever again.")

David texts back a smiley face. Not an emoji, a fucking colon-double space-parens. Sad, Michael thinks, that this is the person his cock has latched onto as the end all-be all.

So maybe it'll never happen again. That's all right, that's fine. Hey, it was a great time. One of those nights you'll look back on fondly in your twilight years. No need to moan about it. 

But Michael's not been like this since he was a fucking teenager: hard at the drop of a hat, horny all the damned time. The smallest detail will set him off, remembering that one night. It's like he's tried some designer drug at a party only to find his body won't want anything else ever again. Craving it the way he thought only the young can crave a thing, like he'll keel over unless he gets it.

He's fuming over this childish fixation, erection in hand, when he gets a text from David, 8:37pm East coast time: "Are you still in New York?" 

He considers replying one-handed, finishing himself off while they chat innocently. Releases his cock with a sigh; he'll come back to it later, it's not going anywhere. "Yeah for the next two weeks or so. Why?"

David is typing. David is typing. David is still typing.

Michael gives himself a few tugs while he waits. 

"I'm here too through the weekend. Shall we get a drink, if you're free?"

Michael fumbles to answer as quickly as he can, jerking session forgotten. His reply is rife with typos, but he manages to get out the name of the hotel he's staying in. A grin threatens to break his face when David responds: "How funny, that's where they put me up too."

The wily little slag. 

There's a bit of a dance, all politeness, that follows. Meet in the lobby bar? Best not, seems a bit crowded; I poked my head in when I got here. Ah, I'm not dressed for it anyway. Oh, long day? Perhaps I should just bring something to you? Oh, would you? Here's the room number, see you soon, and so on.

Michael's room will play host this time then, which seems fair. He tucks himself back into his pajamas, washes his hands, fusses a little with his hair. Tells himself he's being ridiculous; it's not like this is a date. And anyway David might very well be interested only in a friendly drink, a chat. He'd said he'd be up for more, but that was months ago, and in the silvery afterglow of a very good evening, so a statement like that can't be trusted.

He considers changing into a fresh shirt, but there's already a knock at the door. 

There's a moment between that door being closed and the door being open where the tension in Michael's belly nearly overwhelms him. Then he's staring into David's happy, smiling face and he's so light and wonderful that Michael forgets why he was worried. He pulls David into a hug, a really strong one, and gets those spindly arms wrapped around him in return. God, it's good to smell him again.

Well, don't say _ that _. 

"You look well," Michael says, holding him at arm's length, taking in the tan, the fall of his hair over his forehead. Always something of the schoolboy in his face; maybe that's why Michael's feeling such a schoolboy crush these days.

"Looking good yourself," David says. His eyes rake up Michael, and he would be second guessing the pajamas and age-worn, full of holes tee shirt proclaiming the 55th annual Port Talbot Beach Festival but for the honest delight in David's eyes. 

"Hope you don't mind casual," he says, ushering David into the abbreviated sitting room, shutting and locking the door. 

"Love casual, me," says David, already shucking his suit coat. He's dressed sharply, nice shoes. But no tie, Michael notices. Two buttons undone at the throat. 

"Get you something? Think there might be whisky in the—" Michael stops. 

David has taken his tie from his trouser pocket. Neatly folded little bundle. Black with little silver lozenges on it. Places it delicately on top of the credenza next to some postmodern fruit bowl and looks up with only the littlest hint of hesitation.

"Do you remember?" he asks. "What I said?" His smile goes all bashful around the edges. "It was awhile ago, you probably—"

"Blindfold," Michael says automatically. "I remember." 

"Do you still—?"

"God yes." Michael's eyes dart along the cramped entry hall. Here? Against the wall? His knees won't like it in the morning but if that's what David's after then— 

"Ah." A lick of those lips, a glance down at his shined shoes. "Good, I worried maybe—maybe not." He looks over his shoulder, like he's scouting out the terrain.

"Sorry, sorry," Michael says, finally catching on. "The bedroom's just through here." He takes David by the elbow, like they're going out onto a dance floor or something, and leads him while chattering to cover the strangeness of this night. 

"Have you eaten yet? You must have; fed you on the plane, I expect. Well, there's a place on the corner that does a decent breakfast. Huge omelettes. You're here for the whole weekend?"

He palms the tie from the table as they pass.

"Yes. Well, I was supposed to leave yesterday but," David shrugs, "I extended it."

A rush of excitement goes through Michael's middle, quickly quelled. Lots of reasons to change travel plans, he reminds himself. "Oh?" 

"To be honest." David stops in the doorway of the bedroom, a severe, metallic looking room that Michael doesn't particularly find comfortable. "I wanted to see you." He waits, then laughs. "Listen to me, how stupid—" 

"I'm glad," Michael says, and leans up to kiss him. In shoes David's got a few inches on him, and it's a bit thrilling.

He can taste in the kiss how David's matching him for want, for relief, for the slumped feeling of _ Oh thank God, thank God _ that passes between them. It wasn't a dream, that one night they had. They didn't forget. And the things David had said—

"Last time," Michael breathes into the space between their mouths. "Exactly as you described? With the— You. Being passed around."

"Would you?" David groans, slipping off his shoes. "I can't stop thinking about it. Can we—?"

Michael kisses him again. Takes on the rest of those buttons, frees David from his trousers. Yes they damn well can, and maybe this time they'll actually make it to a bed. 

"Turn around," he whispers in David's ear, and lets the tie unravel from his fingers in a long, dark line.

David turns on a dime, no questions. The long, slim line of him is bared to Michael, and he takes a moment to admire the flow of his back, the narrowness of his hips, the pleasant down on his arse and legs. 

It's perhaps a longer moment than David would like, because his head tips slightly, like he wants to look back at Michael. "All right?" he asks.

"Oh," Michael breathes, "never better." He steps close and lifts the tie over David's head, securing it over his eyes and knotting it firmly. "Too tight?"

"It's good." 

Michael doesn't miss the hitch in his breathing. Despite the chill in the room—aggressive hotel air con—Davids skin is flushed a rosy pink.

Michael's hard again in his pajamas, unashamed now that he can press against David and grind against him, palm over his thin chest to catch the gasp that comes from there. Drifting fingers down to cup David's hardness, the slick-hot shape of him. A perfectly average size. Lovely.

It doesn't seem right to go straight into it, start up all the filthy talk. Michael wants to ease them into the story the way he's easing David onto the bed, pillowing him in the crisp bedsheets. David's hands seek him out, cup his face, pull him down for a kiss. It's almost sweet, the way he's like this. Trusting as anything. Pride flows into Michael's chest. 

"You're doing so well," he murmurs. "Beautiful."

The blush works its way up David's neck. "I haven't done anything yet. Except get naked."

"And you've done it so wonderfully." Michael busses him on the cheek, letting his beard tickle, drinking in David's little yelp. 

"Is that— Did you tell the other lads that?" David says haltingly. "Did you tell them I'd be...good for it?"

Michael studies him, waiting behind his blindfold. Bitten red lips, parted like he wants to say more but isn't sure it's what Michael wants to hear. 

"Oh, you beautiful thing." Michael kisses him deep, slides atop him, his weight pinning him into the mattress, creak and groan. "I did."

This is a challenge, not having David's eyes. He's got to look for other clues. The open shape of his mouth, the tightening in his muscles. The excited shiver against the sheets. Tell me where we're going, David, he prays. Tell me where you want me to take you. 

"Especially after last time," Michael says, kissing his way across David's collarbone. "The way you disappointed all the boys, you owe it to them, sweetheart."

That makes David go all rigid beneath him. "Disappointed? What did I—?" 

It's a gamble. Sometimes those pay off. Michael bites down on David's shoulder, licks it in apology. 

"You just passed out after our first fuck, remember? The guys were looking forward to having you thrashing and moaning. They had to make do with fucking you all quiet, limp like a doll."

"Oh God," David keens. "They did? Fuck. They—?"

"Oh yes, pet. One right after the other. Shame you weren't awake for it. You made quite a picture."

David whimpers. "They didn't— All of them?" His cock is leaking against Michael, soaking through his flannel pajamas. His spidery hands are clutching at the thickness of Michael's thighs. Oh yes, it paid off.

"All of them," he confirms. "You missed it. Think you'll be able to keep your head this time?"

"Yes, Christ Almighty—"

"You were an absolute mess after," Michael says, getting into the rhythm of the thing. "I had to clean you up. Come in your hair, dripping down your legs. You're everyone's toy again tonight, aren't you?" 

"Please," he whines. "I need you to fuck me."

"You'll get plenty of that." Michael digs a hand into the hair at the crown of David's head, careful not to nudge the blindfold. "Want me first again?"

Hands fumbling at his drawstring. "Yes, yes."

With a wild grin that David won't ever see, Michael pulls away entirely. "Ah, that'll be the boys at the door," he says, reacting to a silent knock. "I have to get that."

"No, wait." David grabs for him but he's already rolled off the bed. His chest heaves heavy with breath. "Bastard." 

"Yes, completely." Michael calls as he leaves the bedroom. That bit's just for the theatrics, but he does go into the bathroom while he's up, grabs a few essentials from his shaving kit. Thinks hard, then ends up bringing the whole damn bag. Oh, this will be one to remember, he'll make sure of that.

When he returns, David's splayed out on the bed like a starfish, red cock sticking up against his stomach, his fingers bunching the sheets like he's trying to keep himself from touching it. The self restraint is admirable, Michael supposes. He climbs back onto him and kisses his chin.

"That's all of them," he says. "They're waiting in the other room for their turn. You'll be good for our guests, won't you?" 

David arches up against him in answer. Michael laughs. 

"Desperate," he murmurs, pops open his travel bottle of lubricant. The sound is like a bell that has David panting like a dog. 

"Did you tell them," he gasps out, "what to do to me?"

Michael thinks on it for a moment. "I told them you needed to be fucked rather badly," he says, "but it's up to them how they'll have you. Some of them look a bit rough. You don't mind that, do you?" 

"Oh." David curls up under Michael, his face pink beneath the tie that covers his eyes. "As long as you don't let them go too far. You'll be here the whole time, won't you?"

"Of course, pet." Another toss of the dice. "You're mine. I won't let anything happen to you. Not unless you want it, that is." 

David melts, practically purrs against him. "Will you fuck me now?"

Michael laughs, his hand going between David's legs. "Want to get on with it, eh?"

"Want to get you inside me, yeah."

Michael has had a lot of time to think about this, how he'd want it to go if he ever got the chance. These thoughts have sustained him. Fueled a few dozen wanks, a couple dirty dreams. Now that he's got his hands on David again, he doesn't want to waste his time. 

"Open up for me," he says, bumping his shoulder against the inside of David's thigh as he lays down in the space there. David's legs spread wider, impossibly, and Michael slips a finger into him. 

"Ooh, still very tight," he says while he works into him. "No little adventures since the last time, hm?"

David shakes his head. Hard. 

"Yours." He says it so quietly, Michael isn't sure it wasn't just a little sigh.

This man will kill him. Stretching him takes forever.

Michael crawls back on top of him. The slide inside is better than the memory. He's open, ready, spread so sweetly Michael has to hold his blindfolded head between his hands just to anchor himself. 

"Do you like that, pet?" he asks as he fucks into him. "Are you still shy about having my come in you?"

A tiny wail leaves David's mouth, his hips jerk.

"You can stay shy. We both know how much you want it, though." 

"N-no," David chokes out. "You can't." This is part of it. Saying no when he means fuck, yes.

"I can. I have," Michael reminds him, "and I'm going to again." He knows the truth of it as he says it; he's so close to coming already, the heat-rough thrusting into David's body is so good. He wishes he could see his big brown eyes getting darker, wetter— Christ, something must be wrong with him, but he doesn't care.

He needs to focus. It's a very specific thing, what David's asked for, and he needs to be smart about it. Logistically. Emotionally, he's already an absolute fool; no two ways about that. 

He gives one last hard thrust, then pulls out completely. "I've got to stop now, my beauty."

"What? Why?" David holds onto Michael by the hips like he can pull him back inside. "Don't stop, please—"

"I'm sorry, I must. It's someone else's turn now." He kisses David goodbye and leaves him there on the bed.

"But— Michael!" David sits up on his elbows, blindfolded head swiveling. "Michael?" 

He doesn't move. Doesn't breathe. No sound at all for David to follow. He just stands there, wet cock still sticking out of the flap in his pajamas, watching David listen for any noise.

After a moment, he undresses as silently as he can. A textural difference, he figures. Now what's my motivation? He nearly laughs aloud. Must make some sound because David perks up.

"Who's there?"

Who indeed. An American, Michael decides. He's been working with that accent a lot lately anyway. 

"Get up," he says. Dry, nasal, not overly friendly. "On your hands and knees." 

David hesitates, and for a minute Michael thinks he's gone too far. Then he remembers.

"It's all right, pet," he says in his normal voice. "I'm right here. I wouldn't miss it. I love watching you when you're like this. Go on, let the nice man fuck you from behind."

David goes on all fours a bit awkwardly, long limbs in a tangle before righting themselves. He faces away from Michael and presents his rear like a prize hound. Michael reaches out to curve a palm over it, gives it a slap. Chuckles at David's jump.

"He's pretty," he says in his conversational American. "Where did you find him? Look at that." He runs his thumb down the cleft of David's arse. Works his wide thumb into his wet hole, twisting it. David makes a whorish sound. His head drops between his shoulders, hips canting up. "Begs pretty too."

He puts one knee on the mattress, tugs at David's hips until he's manhandled him right where he wants him. Fucks him a little with his thumb. David shudders and gasps when he feels their bare skin touch. Nothing between them now that they're both naked. 

"Now I was told," says the American, "that it was okay to fuck you raw." He pulls out his thumb, lines up his aching dick. "Good. Because I didn't bring condoms." 

"Ah, wait, don't—" David's struggles are so clearly for show; he's working himself onto Michael's cock more than he's trying to claw his way free. 

Michael gives a loud groan as he goes deep, fully seated now. "That's more like it." He starts to fuck David in earnest, no buildup. The American wouldn't care, he decides. It's all right. David seems to like it a little rough.

He doesn't ask. He trusts David to say it's too much, that he means no for real. He grabs a fistful of David's soft hair and yanks. 

The effect is immediate. The deep curved U of David's spine. The audible patter of fluid gushing from his cock to the sheets. 

"Slut's all wet," he remarks, palming David's dribbling dick. "You like that?" 

"Yes," he says. His mouth is open, gaping at the ceiling. "Yes, yes."

He wants to come, wants to make David come, but they're not twenty anymore and he doesn't want David to be too sensitive for anything else tonight. He's got a few more characters to debut after all. 

He pulls out with a grunt and a fond slap to David's thigh. "Who's next?" he calls out, still in the accent. 

David stays where he is, shivery and goosefleshed. Michael feels a surge of pity and lays a gentle hand on the small of his back. 

"Allow me, precious." This voice is deep, posh, the sort of voice that should be reciting romantic poetry or narrating an audiobook about a tragic Russian. 

He urges David onto his side and spoons up behind, holding him close with his hands clasped over his belly and chest. David's breath comes in a low sob as he slides back in. He's so well lubed and open, takes him so nicely. 

"What a lovely fuck you are," he says into David's ear. "Is it good like this?" One hand toys idly in his soft, sparse chest hair, plucking at a nipple.

"Please," David babbles, "oh, yes." His hips press back into the shelter of Michael's body. "Yes, touch me."

Both hands on David's chest now, shallow thursts turning to rolls, fingertips pinching harder at his nipples. Pulling cries out of him. His puts his lips to his hot, pink ear. 

"May I add to the mess inside you?" Proper and polite. "Oh, I think I have to. Mm, yes—" 

He doesn't plan on actually coming; it was only going to be a bit of pretend, a little moaning and groaning. He wants to last. But what with David writhing against him like that, he finds himself tipping over despite his best intentions. David must feel it, the warm spurt inside him, because he pleads for it to stop, though they both know it won't. 

"Not inside me, don't—!" 

"Rather too late, I'm afraid." He kisses the sweaty nape of David's neck in real apology. Now how will he keep their little play going? His balls are drained, his softening cock not long for David's clenched hole. He lets go of him with a sigh. "One moment, we'll get another lad for you."

Michael extracts himself from the bed on wobbly feet. That orgasm had been a strong one, left him all weak, stumbling. He manages not to fall over getting to his shaving kit where he's left it on the dresser, gaping open. He finds what he needs inside, returns to David as quick as he can. The poor thing is aching, his whole body vibrating where he lies, hands knotted in the sheets. His eyes still covered by the tie. 

Michael urges him onto his back with soft, gentle touches. "Here we are," says Michael. This voice is a little twee, a bit of a spritely lilt to it. "How are we doing, darling?" He slips one slim finger into David, then bends to suck his cock.

David gives a surprised shout, arching up into his throat, his hands going for Michael's curls. Michael smiles and hums around him. Pulls off just to say, "Oh, I couldn't resist. You taste as good as you look, you know." 

A strangled cry pours from David's mouth. "Please, I'm so close." He's twitching under Michael's lips where he's rubbing them against the cherry-red tip of his wet dick.

"Not yet, I'm afraid," says the twee man, and carefully pulls at David's tight bollocks until they've been somewhat tamed. "You've a ways to go." He gives David's hole one last pump of his finger before removing it.

A sob gets muffled into a pillow, David's head thrashing. 

Michael grins, lifts himself up. Finds what he'd stashed on the sheets close at hand. He fits the head of the dildo to David's hole, messes about in the stream of come that's pouring out of him. "Ready for another?"

David goes taut at the brush of the fake cock. Realizing. Laughing. "Where did you get that?" he asks, delighted.

"Never leave home without it, dearest," Michael croons, and pushes it home.

He's glad now that he's packed the toy, but of course he'd been so awful to himself about it at the time, ashamed at how badly he needed to jerk off, and how often. Being on top was all well and good if that's what someone wanted, especially if that someone was David, but Michael's penchant for being fucked himself was long-running and deep. The dildo had been a fine companion these few lonely months and he was happy to see it put to even better use now. 

He fucked David leisurely, interested in all his sounds and jolts, nudging him over so he could lay beside him and watch the play of emotions on his blindfolded face. 

"You're so lovely," he sighed. It wasn't a lie. Watching David being fucked while his own come ran out of him—it was enough to make even a very tired man hard again after awhile.

"Do you want to come like this?" He's still doing the silly voice and it should feel ridiculous but David's enjoyment is a wild, living creature, making him rock and wail, cock an angry red against his belly.

"No, I want—" He swallows, a dry clicking noise in good throat. "I want you to finish, and then I—" He turns his head and speaks into his shoulder. "Michael, I want you, I want you to finish me off."

"Of course, pet." No more false voices, just the two of them now, Michael's lips on his throat as he works the toy inside him. "I've got you."

He takes the slippery toy out of David and lets it fall to the carpet. That can be dealt with later, really. His cock is taking precedence now, straining toward David where he rolls atop him. 

"All right?" he asks, pushing inside. Oh it's filthy, the come and lube easing his way. He finds the tube of the latter under a sheet and drizzles some more at the base of his dick. Fucks it into David as he goes. 

David hisses. "Are they all gone?" he asks. "Just the two of us?" The way his fingers are digging into Michael's shoulders give him the answer.

"Yes, pet." He drags a damp strand of hair from David's forehead. "You've left them all very satisfied. You were so good for them. You can't believe how much I enjoyed watching you take their cocks." 

"Can you—?" David waggles his head, flapping the ends of the tie over his shoulder. "If we're alone. I didn't want them to see me, but you can. Please."

Michael has a moment of selfish vanity come over him: his hair's likely a mess, and he'll be red in the face, and he isn't sure that he doesn't have some spittle in his beard. But David is begging to see him. So he unties the blindfold and lets it fall away.

David's deep brown eyes grow wide, darken nearly to black as he stares up at Michael. "Oh God," he breathes. "Oh Christ."

"Come here," Michael says and, ignoring the twinge in his lower back that tells him otherwise, hauls David against him and sits upright so that David is seated in his lap, cock impossibly deep inside. 

"Ride me, sweetheart," he says, "I want to see you come."

David moves, his shaking legs working, rising up and down again. "I'm so full," he sobs. "It's leaking—" 

"Mmm." Michael palms behind David, getting a bit of the mess on his fingers. "You took a few loads, didn't you? Oh, but you're gorgeous."

He touches David then, wraps his wet hand around his dick and works it. Strokes him like he'd stroked himself all those nights alone, thinking of this, and not able to ever imagine how good it would really be. 

"Come on, come all over yourself, you dirty thing," he says, and David does.

Later Michael will be privately pleased with himself for managing two very powerful orgasms in one very active evening—no small feat these days—but in the moment, he's just wrapped up in David's expression, a beatific open-mouthed thing, eyes rolled back just a touch. Like he can't stand how good it is. And that is how Michael comes again.

"You didn't try a Scottish one," David will complain in the incredibly roomy shower as they rinse off together. "You didn't even have a go."

"I didn't want to offend," Michael says, "or be laughed at."

David will flick water in his eyes. It will be sweet and strange, but right now?

"Holy fuck," David pants against his neck. "How did you know to bring that thing? I thought I was going to jump out of my skin."

"Just lucky I suppose," Michael says, and presses a kiss to his temple. 

They lay there before their shared shower, sharing breath, and thinking what a good memory this will be. 


	3. Chapter 3

It's not a hotel room this time. 

This time they've managed to get a long weekend—well, three consecutive days in the middle of the week, but who can keep a regular schedule anymore?

David's the one who fixed it up. Found the free time on their calendars, booked the place (middle of the bloody moors; Michael can't wait to get murdered out here), rented the Land Rover.

The logical leap is simple: David probably wants more of the same, this little game of theirs, wants to indulge the fantasy for more than an hour or two. And Michael is happy to oblige, especially when a holiday in the country means all the strange little domestic quirks he's never been allowed to have before.

Stopping at a shop on the way to pick up groceries so the house is stocked for the stay. Standing in the produce aisle debating whether sandwiches and canned soup are fine, or if they can attempt a spaghetti Bolognese for dinner tonight. Realizing David has opinions about lettuce. Michael watches him squeeze at tomatoes in his sunglasses and cap—basic incognito uniform—and thinks even if this all they get this weekend (mid-week weekend) that would be fine.

Because the thing is, Michael has come to terms with it. He's a hopeless, lovelorn sap when it comes to David. Fucking him is great, of course, but it's the thing his eyes do when he's calm and blissed out in Michael's arms, or chattering happily about organic produce. That's the thing.

So they buy the very velvety lettuce and the tomatoes that can withstand the squeezing and pile everything into the car and drive to the rental house like this is normal.

By the time they pull into the gravel drive, Michael's already gotten what he wants. As far as he's concerned, his boxes have been ticked. He's more worried about David, and what they could possibly do with the three days they have that would excite him beyond what they've already done.

It's a matter of imagination, and it's a lot of pressure. Michael is wracking his brain even as he's carrying the bags up to the front door. How to out-do himself? The last time, with the voices, pretending to be a whole passal of blokes lining up to fuck David—that had been so good. 

Maybe he can make the stakes higher? More of a psychological mindfuck?  _ There's video, they're going to splash it all over the internet if you don't do exactly what they want. _ David loves playing the whore, loves protesting when inside he's glowing. Could be Michael will use him like he wants, maybe keep him tied up somewhere and make him wait for the next cock to suck. 

Just thinking about it makes him nearly drop a duffle bag. God in heaven, what Michael wouldn't give.... But it's selfish to want that for himself. Those days are behind him, when he could play the beauty. David's the one he needs to be focused on. They only have three days.

David insists on cooking dinner, which is sweet. He says he doesn't mind, that he's looking forward to this sort of thing. "It's the whole point." His voice gets high and lovely when he's like this, relaxed. He's stirring a pot of mostly store-bought sauce while Michael sits at the counter, watching. "I came up with this entire thing—" David waves the wooden spoon in the air. Minimal spatter. "As a way to say thank you."

"Thank you?" Michael makes a face. "Christ, you don't need to thank me. What do you need to thank me for? I should be thanking you."

"Oh sure." He's composing a fucking salad in a huge bowl, fluffing the expensive lettuce with his fingertips. Michael has never been more in love. "Don't need to thank you for anything," David continues in what is now becoming a very scathing tone. "You just pull my deepest desires out of a hat like a bleeding magician and expect nothing in return, hm?"

"Well, it wasn't a completely selfless act," Michael points out. "I very much got something in return." He thinks about their last night together. "Twice."

"Dreams literally came true," David says like he hasn't heard Michael. "And I can't say thank you? Ridiculous." He puts a plate in front of him. "Eat that."

Michael does, but after four bites notices that David isn't digging into his own (quite serviceable) dinner. He's just staring at Michael from across the kitchen island like he's considering a chess move.

"I think it's your turn," he finally says.

Michael has a mouth full of food which he carefully chews and swallows before dabbing at his lips with a paper towel. He knows how to prolong a dramatic moment too, you know.

"For?" he asks.

"For whatever you want." Now David turns his attention to the food, helping himself to the salad and moving his fork through it to find one tiny piece of everything. A perfect bite. "You must have some fantasies of your own, right?"

Michael will not blush. He won't. He's a grown man. 

"David, my boy," he says, affecting one of his sillier, avuncular voices, "the time for all that has by now passed me by. In these twilight years I'm lucky to simply—"

"Oh, come off it." David plunks some salad on his plate without asking if he wants any. "Is it that bad? I told you all about mine."

"No, it's not—"

"Oooooh, maybe it's really awful."

"It's not awful, just—"

"Will I have to pretend to be a sheep or something?"

Michael balls up his paper towel and throws it at him. David just laughs as it bounces off his shoulder and falls to the floor.

"Honestly," David says, eyes still crinkled at the corners, "whatever it is, I'm up for it."

"Well, you can't promise that," Michael says reasonably. 

"Course I can." David pours them both more wine. "If it's you, I'm up for it. I'll at least give it a go."

_ If it's you. _ Are there any sweeter words? Michael thinks not. 

He twiddles with his fork, considering.

"I can't imagine you'll enjoy it. I can't quite picture it."

David lights up. "So there is something!"

There is certainly something. It's something Michael hasn't even thought of in ages, not properly. 

"When I was younger..." he begins. Stops.

When he was younger, things were different. He wasn't carrying his weight about the middle, or wearing a beard, or concerned with his cholesterol. His knees and back weren't in the sad shape they are now, and he could (and did) spend all day on his feet working and then go dancing all night.

Back then, he was a sweet young thing. Back then, he was slight enough to be lifted against a wall. Back then, he could be taken raw and rough and still have the energy to go for a jog the next morning.

And from what he knows of David, that's not in his wheelhouse. The man loved to be fucked, that much is clear. How would he even pretend to enjoy holding Michael down? Really getting his hands in Michael's hair? Pulling him around and calling him filthy names?

It would be like asking a puppy dog to hunt wild boar.

Not to mention, Michael's no longer that fresh faced boy. To act as if he were young again—to ask David to call him pretty—it's too depressing to contemplate.

Michael considers all this and nearly keeps his mouth shut. Could just make up a harmless lie. Feet, something like that. Might not be terrible, but certainly nothing life changing. He so nearly does that. But David is looking at him eagerly, greedily, and it's so good of him to even offer.... 

Michael softens.

"You can say no. I won't be disappointed if it's not your cup of tea."

David licks his lips. "Try me."

Michael laughs. Scratches a hand through the back of his hair, only half playing at bashful

"There was a time," he starts again, "when I was known as a bit of..." His head waggles. "A tart, I suppose. Went in for the rougher sort."

David's keen look does not abate, miraculously enough. "Not sure what that means," he says, "but go on."

"Oh, you know. Bit cliched. Chained up to walls, tied to beds. I spent one very memorable evening strapped into one of those sex swings." He mimes the motion with his hand, back and forth. 

David watches him closely. "Really."

Michael sips his wine. "Not all the time, of course. It wasn't like I was partying with rockstars and models every night, but there was a certain kind of bloke who would be very accommodating." He laughs. "Amazing what people will do for a cute face and some cherry lips."

"Really?" David says again, awed this time. "You'd... You wanted to be tied up? You still want that?"

Michael shrugs. "Not the type any longer, I know. If you want someone who looks good in that sort of position, naturally you look..." His gaze skates over David, the slimness of him, the strange vulnerability in his face. "Elsewhere."

David opens his mouth like he's going to protest.

"Which is fine!" Michael continues. "Like I said. Can't keep trying to recapture my wild youth. What a sad old man thing to do, hm?"

"Horse shit." The Scottish bite on it makes Michael almost choke on his wine. "It's not sad. What's sad is thinking— Were you never going to ask me to do something like that for you?"

"Uh, no? It's not as if you'd want to." Michael looks at him. "Right?"

"Well!" David pushes his sleeves further up his arms, the better to cross them over his chest like he's gearing up to be miffed. "I like that. If you don't think I can handle a few knots and some rough housing, just say so."

"I'm sure you could," Michael says. "I just didn't think you'd care to."

David glares at him for a beat longer before collecting their empty dishes. "What else were you doing in these scandalous days of trollop-hood?"

Michael blinks. "It wasn't actually all that exotic or complicated. I'd get restrained somehow, didn't much care about the details—some strapping lad would see to me, or do what he liked with me. I guess you could say it was the, erm, attention. That I enjoyed." He shifted a bit in his seat. "Center of all that—" His hands cupped an invisible ball. "Focus, or something."

David places all their dishes in the sink with the pots and pans. Washes his hands. Shakes them dry. "So it's not about pain, or discipline or anything like that. You just like being the star of the show. And taking cock? You still enjoy it?"

Michael is salivating a bit now. He can feel it pooling in his mouth. Steady on, he tells himself. "It's been awhile, but...."

"Right." David points to the sink. "Dishes. You do that. Only fair. I'll be in the bedroom when you've finished."

Michael can't stop his eyes from bugging. "Wait, are you...?" He's so oddly touched. "David Tennant, are you going to attempt to be a bit butch? For me?"

David scowls, but it's fond. "Oh shut it." He swats at Michael's rump as he passes by, not very hard but producing a fine sound on the bits that don't quite fit on the narrow island stool. "Don't dawdle now."

Michael has never been overly talented as far as housework goes but somehow he manages to get everything washed and in the dish rack in some sort of world record.

He's drying his hands on his jeans as he makes his way down the hallway, tentative in the strange house, still not sure which door is the bath and which is the master. He finally finds the bedroom down at the end of the corridor, a cozy thing trimmed in chintz with a picture window that frames the rolling moors behind the property. 

David is still wearing clothes, which is a pity. He's holding what looks like a pillowcase and ripping it into strips. At his feet on the rug sits a pile of knotted tatters. Michael is reminded of movies where the heroine has to escape from a window with a long line of sheets all tied together.

"I couldn't find any rope," David says by way of explanation. "No chains in the garage that I could see. Their rating isn't looking very good, is it?"

"You destroyed their linens?" Michael is suddenly achingly hard. "You've ruined them?"

"I'll pay for it," David says, high and defensive. "Besides, these were clearly spares. I found them in the cupboard. They can spare spares." 

"No, it's brilliant."

David gives him a smile, gestures to his pile of makeshift bindings. "I may not be an expert in this or anything, but I think you probably shouldn't still have clothes on." 

"If you say so." Michael pulls his jumper over his head, struggles with his belt buckle. He's trying not to think of how jiggly his belly has gotten just above his waistband, or how much room his thighs take up in his jeans. 

If David thinks he's all right, he must be all right.

He tells David it doesn't need to be fancy, they don't need to lose their deposit trying to suspend anyone from the ceiling fan or some such nonsense. David laughs as he ties his arms in front of him. Not tight at all; he could slip free if he wanted to but it's the idea that's turning him on. It's the way David eases him down to sit on the edge of the bed, how he kneels to tie Michael's wrists together while saying quite casually, "Let me know if it's too hard on the joints, right?"

"Right." Michael wriggles onto the bed on his back, breath getting faster.

David is doing a not-too-shabby panther impersonation, long limbs crawling towards him, caging him in. Still fully clothed and gorgeous for the way he's looking at Michael like he's a meal.

"Finally," David breathes. "Got my pretty little prize."

Michael is none of those things, but his smart mouth is stopped by one sharp look from David. His clever hands move over Michael's leg, up his bare thigh, tickling over his hip, not stopping until he's grabbed a handful of Michael's chest, thumb working over the nipple. "You don't like that? 'Pretty?' What, you'd rather I call you beautiful? Gorgeous? Fishing for compliments, aren't you?"

David's nose dips into the white-grey fur of his chest hair, snaps at the point of his nipple. Michael is leaking like a faucet now, a steady stream of clear, pungent fluid smearing across his belly. 

"Fuck me," he hisses.

"Little soon for that," David murmurs into his chest. "The rumors were true, then. You are easy, aren't you?"

Michael spreads his legs, makes a space for David between them. It's a whoreish display that makes David's eyes widen. 

"Would you look at that." He reaches down past Michael's bollocks to press one dry fingertip to the furl of muscle there. "You don't need anything to get going, do you?" He clutches at Michael's chest again, a palmful gathered and massaged. "Can't I just play with your tits for a minute? Or are you that impatient?"

At the word 'tits' something in Michael sings out. Oh, he's too old for this, isn't he? Rightfully this sort of thing is a young man's— Well. A young slag's game. He keens and buries his hot face into David's shoulder, biting down on cotton.

David's a good scene partner in every sense. He stays quiet for a moment, thinking, processing, before groping at Michael again, harder this time, twisting his nipple viciously. 

"That's what you're doing," he growls, "trying to keep these tits of yours away from me. It's not going to work. They're mine now. All of you—it's mine."

"Christ Alive, David!" Is it a prayer? He's not sure. He's arching into David's touch, trying to wriggle himself closer into the curve of his wiry body. It's not fair, that he's so good at this right off the bat. He's not even practiced, Michael thinks wildly. 

"Look at you. Can't even keep still." David manhandles him flat onto his back, teeth nipping at his chest. Leaving red marks, Michael hopes. "I'll have to tie you down, I suppose."

The bed's one of those old creaky brass numbers, headboard made up of metal bars. David wastes no time tying Michael's gathered wrists there. It's not a bad job even, decent hold. Michael tugs to test the knots, thinks about the wisdom of making some kind of scouting joke, but the dark look on David's face dissuades him.

"It's all right?" he asks even through the glare. Oh, but he's sweet. Michael grins.

"Terribly comfortable," he confirms.

David crawls beside him, a long lanky line against his flank. "Now I don't want any backchat, all right? I'm going to do what I like and you're going to behave, yeah?"

Michael considers. Would David find it more fun to play against a bratty version of Michael? A pouting, whining little bitch? Or would he rather enjoy an obedient toy? It's hard to decide. 

David watches him, seems to read his mind. "If you don't behave," he says slowly, "I'll just need to get creative. You know how I can get when I'm being creative, don't you, kitten?"

"Kitten!?" Michael blurts out.

David winces. "Too much?" 

"No, I love it." Michael settles in against the pillows. "Come on then. I shall try to behave. As requested." 

(He won't.)

That's all right, David's smirk tells him. That's part of the game.

David sits up, gets his hands on his fly, peels open his jeans and lets his hard cock out. The way they're positioned, Michael can see every inch of it, can't keep his mouth from watering. He thinks about his younger years, when any weekday evening might find him in a back room getting facefucked by some bloke who didn't even know his name. He licks his lips, darts a look up at David, silently begging for it.

David wags one finger back and forth. "Not yet," he says, and leans down to rub the head of his prick directly over one of Michael's taut nipples.

Michael gasps. The bed squeaks. David is wet, he's always so wet, but he's leaking so much now, a steady stream of clear fluid that smears across his nipple burning hot one moment, then cooling to leave him prickled with gooseflesh. 

"Holy— fuck." Michael tries to squirm, both toward the touch and away, but he can't get very far with his arms bound. He's never done this before. Isn't even sure what you would call it. But oh, it's like being marked and used and it's so good.

"None of that now." David straddles his chest with a grunt, knees to Michael's shoulders. He's a thin bloke but his weight is more than enough to keep Michael pinned down. He leans forward, a hand atop the headboard for balance, to keep from crushing Michael—and keeps rubbing his cockhead all over his nipple, circling it in a little wheel of his slick.

Michael is speechless at this strange marking, but David fills the silence with whispered filth. 

"Look at that. You can't admit it, but your tits are loving it." He switches to the other nipple, anointing it with his precome, pressing the tip so hard against Michael that his nipple indents, blushes a fierce pink.

"I could spend all day right here," David says, dragging his cock down to center of Michael's chest, leaving a sticky trail down his sternum, clinging to white-grey hairs. "How would you like that? Have me come on your tits? Rub it around a bit until I can go again? Keep you drenched?"

"Jesus, David," Michael breathes. 

"I'm not hearing an answer there." David leans impossibly forward, the head of his prick tapping at Michael's bottom lip. "If you're not going to say anything useful, might as well give your mouth a job."

Michael takes this as an opportunity to test David's creativity. He twists his head away, bites his lip. Makes a high whine in the back of his throat when David grabs a handful of his curly hair and pulls him back. 

"Bit late to play coy." He smears his wet cock along Michael's chin. "You've been gagging for this all night. What's the problem?"

Michael swallows. Locks eyes with David and takes a step into the unknown. "I don't work for free," he says.

David pauses but it's just a matter of seconds before he's there to catch Michael. Keep him afloat. "So that's how it is. Think you can suck off the bigshot actor once and you'll be set for life?"

Michael smiles. Beatific. "That is the idea, yes." He tilts his head so his cheek nuzzles against the veiny length of David's prick. "I'm not cheap, you know."

"No, never." David thumbs at his lower lip, opens up his mouth, runs along the plush wet of it. "Like cherries. You use gloss? Rouge?"

Michael balks again. "No," he laughs. 

"Hm." David dismounts, crawls off the bed. Michael panics just a little, just for a moment. Weren't they having fun? Where is he going?

David crosses the room and disappears into the en suite. Michael cranes his neck as much as he can, but from his spot tied to the bed he can't make out what David's doing in there. He can hear drawers opening and closing, the click of bathroom implements. 

"If you're so expensive," David calls from the en suite, "I suppose I should be getting my money's worth."

He comes out of the bathroom holding something in his hands. It's small and fiddly, and Michael squints but he can't make it out. He doesn't understand until David uncaps the tube and twists. 

A dark red flash of pigment appears. Cranberry, Michael thinks wildly. The sort of lipstick you'd wear with green, or black, or nothing at all.

"Did you pack that?" Michael asks, too curious to keep up the fiction of their little scene for the moment.

David gestures to the bathroom doorway. "Lots of stuff left in the cupboards. Another black mark on the review, I wager. Except in this case," he twists the tube more until the lipstick rises obscenely in the air, "seems to have worked out."

He climbs over Michael, his weight settling over his hips, still holding the lipstick in one hand. The cap gets tossed to the carpet in what is surely the most important character choice David has made yet. So he's careless with his things, Michael thinks, and feels a surge of excitement at the idea. 

Some of that delight must show on his face because David actually tsks at him. Like a school marm. "Give it here," he says, and takes Michael by the chin.

Michael senses he should fight this, at least for show, and so shakes his head loose from David's fingers. "Stop it, I'm not—"

"Not what?" A surprisingly strong hand grabs his face, thumb and forefinger making a triangle of his jaw. "Not a pretty whore with a lovely mouth?" Michael stills, transfixed. He stares up at David. There's only one sound in the room, and Michael realizes it's his own panting breaths. 

"There we are," David murmurs. He brings the lipstick up to Michael's mouth. Traces it along his bottom lip, outlines the bow at the top. "That's it," he whispers. "I own this mouth. I can dress it up however I like, can't I?"

Michael jerks his head away and it's only David's quick reflexes that keep the lipstick from smearing across his cheek. 

David's free hand is back in his hair in an instant, dragging him back into place. Pulling hard enough for tears to spring into Michael's eyes.

"Hey." He gives Michael's head a little shake. "You want your rent paid? You want food in your fridge? This is part of the deal, kitten." He holds up the lipstick again, eyebrows arched high. 

Michael relaxes his tense jaw. Lets his mouth fall open. 

"Good girl," David whispers, and Michael's achingly hard cock jerks against his belly at that. David finishes painting his lip a deep red, then sits back to admire his work. 

"Was that so difficult?" he asks, and puts the tube on the bedside table with a click.

"Bastard," Michael says under his breath, loud enough for it not to be a mistake.

David pins him with a look. Cold. Superior. "Well, yes," he says, and then puts both his hands to Michael's chest, kneading handfuls of his tits and clamping the nipples between his long fingers. "But you're this bastard's property, aren't you?"

Michael cries out, can't help it. Can't help how his legs kick either, trying desperately to gain purchase, but the way David's straddling him, fondling him like— He's helpless like this.

"Oho!" David reaches back behind himself, catches one of Michael's ankles. "You're a wild one. Do I need to tie your legs too?"

"No, no you don't need to," Michael babbles even as his legs go lax. He's boneless as David slides off him, arranging him like a doll. "I'll be good, honestly."

"Maybe I don't like you good." David snatches up another length of the ripped and knotted sheets and binds his feet together. "Maybe I like you wrapped up." 

Michael whimpers as David winds the fabric up his calves nearly to his knees before tying it off. He can't even open his legs like this, can't do much of anything. It's wonderful.

"I was going to feed you this," David says as he palms his straining cock, now staining the front of his jeans with fluid, "then I thought maybe I'd just rub off on you, maybe squish your tits together and get off that way. But now I think I should fuck you properly. I'm paying for enough, aren't I?"

Where is this all coming from, Michael wonders. Is David a mind reader or is this some kind of strange confluence of their different fantasies? He can't find it in him to care. 

"Yes," he says, strangled, "you take care of me, just like we agreed. That makes me yours." He lowers his eyes, makes a show of licking at his red lips. "I'll let you do whatever you like."

David strokes a finger down the side of his face, and for a moment, Michael fears he's gone too far and David wants to reel him back in with a gentle touch. He looks up, questions in his eyes, and sees David is still looking at him like he's a piece of very expensive, succulent meat.

"Oh, kitten," he sighs. His hand slides into Michael's hair and pulls him up, a scant millimeter from David's lips, neck and arms straining at the sudden change in position. "You're so very cute. It's so adorable that you think you have a choice at this point."

He lets go. Michael's head thuds back to the pillow. He lays there, eyes wide and pulse racing, as David moves down the bed and collects his bound legs in his hands. 

"No kicking about now," he chides as he lifts Michael's joined ankles to rest on his shoulder. "I don't have the patience for that."

David does have enough patience, it turns out, to finger Michael open as thoroughly as he's ever been. He must've had the lube in his jeans pocket because he doesn't move from his spot, just fiddles with things out of Michael's eyesight, and then gets his slick fingers inside, slow and careful. Michael finds himself squirming again, trying to get more, deeper, harder. David pinches his calf and shushes him. "I'm busy, pet. Don't distract me now."

"Aren't you going to fuck me?" Michael pants. He wonders if this is the bridge too far, if after all of that David won't be able to make good on his word. It was just a performance anyway, and it's not as if he wants to force David into anything he doesn't want to do. He's bracing for disappointment, already coming up with what to say. No worries, it was good fun at any rate; why don't you sit on my cock and I'll finish us both off? That sort of compromise would be fine.

David looks at him wildly. "You're not ready yet," he says, all pretense dropped for a second. "I'm not going to go barging in like some barbarian. Give me a moment, will you?" He turns his head and nips at Michael's ankle. When he speaks again, it's with his other voice, the darker, more dangerous one. "Impatient little tart."

Michael's been fucked a lot of different ways. His youth had been a veritable encyclopedia of positions. But he's never been had like this, limbs trussed and bent into a right angle, legs squeezed together and thrown over David's shoulder like a sack of grain. He likes it, actually. The dull ache in his shoulders, the helpless way his hips twitch for leverage they won't get. He likes the look of his cock and balls all gathered up and straining, neglected, in the seam of his thighs. He likes how he can't see exactly what David's doing to him; makes the sensations more profound. He concentrates on how relaxed his hole feels, like it knows David's hands, or (probably more accurately) has been plied while Michael's thinking of David's hands often enough.

"I don't want to hear 'no' from you," David says as his touch gets bolder, more firm. "I don't want any whinging or moaning. Understand?"

Michael nods, mouth hanging open. Probably looks like a stupid slut, he thinks.

"If you're talking," David twists his fingers deeper, "you won't be asking me for this and that. I don't care what you want. You're here for me, got that?"

"I don't matter," Michael's saying. His voice is thready and soft. Like a girl. "I'm your... Your little..." He doesn't know, exactly. 

"My little treat." David slips his fingers free, replaces them with the stout thickness of his thumb. "My own personal toy. My pretty pet."

"Yes," Michael gasps. Squirms on his thumb. "Christ, please—!"

"What did I say about begging?" David snarls, and all at once his hand is gone and his cock is slamming inside. Michael's open enough that it doesn't hurt, doesn't feel like anything but a delicious burn, but the loud slap of their skin makes him cry out in a sob.

"You weren't crying when I paid for all your fancy clothes, were you?" David says as his hips work against Michael, rutting into him in shallow thrusts. "You thought you were getting a wonderful bargain, princess."

"I did, it is," Michael simpers, "only, please don't go so fast." (David isn't going particularly fast at all.) "I won't be able to take it."

"Oh, you'll take it." David's hips speed up just as Michael hoped they would. 

His eyes nearly roll black in his head, he's so blissed out. "You're a beast," he manages to spit. "Please, I'm not used to it like this, it's too much, it's too deep."

"Is it?" David shrugs his legs from their spot on his shoulder, tosses them out to the right. It forces Michael to roll onto his side as much as his bound hands allow. David grabs him by the fleshy handle of his left hip and buries himself in his hole again. "How's that?" he hisses. "Too deep for Her Majesty?"

Michael twists on the bed, feigning an attempt to get free, which of course only serves to spear him more firmly on David's cock. "Is that all I am to you?" he pants, really going for pathos at this point. "Some warm hole for you to fuck?"

"Of course not, kitten." David manages to sound as surprised as he does sarcastic. "You're more than a hole." He gropes at Michael's chest one-handed, squeezing and tweaking him. "You're also a magnificent pair of tits." His hand ries, fingers hooking into the corner of Michael's lips. "And a fantastic cocksucking mouth."

Where was he getting this stuff, Michael thinks wildly. And where could he get more of it?

Michael bites down on the fingers between his teeth, not hard, just for show, but David reacts as if he'd drawn blood, pulling back his hand with a hiss. 

"This is the thanks I get?" he says, pounding away. "After all I've given you? You can't just lay there like the pretty thing I've paid for and take it?"

Michael's response is swallowed up by a kiss, fierce and demanding as David leans over him. He feels the telltale stickiness of the lipstick smearing as David ravages his mouth, and when they part, David has as much cranberry red across his face as Michael must. He grins wildly through the mess.

"You're going to take it," he said, "right. In. Your. Tight. Little. Cunt."

Michael shouts, says something, he doesn't know what. He just knows those filthy words light up something in his belly. He can feel David coming inside him, the heat and dribble of it gushing on the backs of his legs as David pulls out. He probably calls David some very choice names—and then he's manhandled again so that David can lay him out and bury his head in Michael's lap to suck at his twitching cock. He looks down to see lipstick smears on his skin where David's making a mess, taking him down his throat, swallowing his come with a satisfied groan.

Now that's a picture, he thinks before he absolutely falls straight to sleep like the overtaxed middle aged man he is. 

He comes to with the sight of David hovering over himself, concern on every inch of his lipstick-smeared face. 

"I said, was that all right?" he apparently repeats, sounding more than a little put out. "With the whole—" He motions to the makeup staining his face. 

"It was perfectly fine." Michael realizes 1. It's true and 2. He's been untied, so he can lift a hand to David's cheek. Which he does. "I'm absolutely all right."

"Yeah?" David covers his hand with his own to keep it there. "Because I said some really weird fucking things."

Michael smiles. "Wonderful weird things. I loved it." He almost says more, but can't ruin this downy-soft glow they've got going. "Full marks. Very inventive. Wasn't expecting so much propwork. Well done."

David beams. "Switch off tomorrow?" he asks. 

Michael stretches a bit, cracks two vertebrae in his lower back. "I'm up for that," he says, and kisses David soundly. 

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

"This is something I want to do," he tells Michael. He's pale; his hands giving off a faint tremor as he holds up the blasted thing. "Might not look it, but I do. I really do."

Michael takes the camera. Fiddles with the flash. "Okay, but…." They don't usually talk about rules. It's more of a give and take, interpreting movements and sounds. Michael feels like this time, he should be clear about what the rules are. "You hate having your picture taken." He makes a guess. "No faces?" 

David emits a considering noise. "It's not the face that bothers me. So long as it's that—" He points to the Polaroid camera. "Nothing digital. And you swear we burn them all after."

"Of course," Michael says without hesitation. "I wouldn't—" He shuts his mouth. You can't get more trust by telling someone to hand it over. That doesn't prove anything. He wonders if this is some kind of test. If it is, he intends to pass with flying colors. 

He turns the camera over in his hands, considering. "It'll be like those Zen water paintings, then. Ephemeral pretty things." He grins at David. "Nothing but memories after."

"Eh, maybe a bruise or two." David's more relaxed now. Drinks down the rest of his coffee like they're discussing a shopping list. Like the idea of Michael's fingertips marking his hipbones has become commonplace. 

"Is this part of the, erm." Michael's voice drops into another accent, a deeper register. "Party favor thing?" 

There's the blush on David's stubbled cheek that gives Michael life. "Well, yes. I'd like it to be."

"Blindfolded again?" They've already ruined a set of sheets and a few towels but surely he can find something to press into service. Maybe even tie David up like David had him the other day—fuck, that'd been good. 

David looks off to the side, out the window that's above the sink. "Ah, actually. I was wondering." He struggles to finish his sentence. "It's so quiet out here." Gestures to the empty lane. They've not seen a car for two days. "Don't you think?"

Michael tries to parse this. He's got some idea of what David's trying to suggest, but he wants to be sure.

"Outside?" he asks, his voice higher than he'd like. "As in, the woods?"

David looks horrified. "God, no! Not…. Not like that." He taps his blunt nails against the mug in his hands. "At least, not all of me."

"You're going to have to explain," Michael says.

"The owners must have a large breed," David begins, and Michael's brain fizzles out sightly at the word 'breed' and doesn't come back online for a few more moments, by which point David has moved on to using hand gestures to illustrate his point. 

"So I'll be there, and you'll be back here, and—"

"Hold on. Uh, sorry. One more time?" Michael asks and David obliges.

Which is how he finds himself kneeling on the back patio where the large doggie door leads into the mud room. David is stuck in the opening, only visible from the waist down.

"Right," David says. Muffled and indoors. "I might...actually be stuck. Bloody hell."

Michael can't help himself. He laughs long and loud. "This is ridiculous," he crows. "I absolutely love it." 

Of all the things he'd thought David might ask him to do, this wasn't even in the same universe as the list. It's somewhat charmining, the lengths to which David's imagination will stretch—more charming still, how quickly Michael will follow. 

"Oh shut up!" David's bare feet scrabble on the patio stones, looking for purchase but only serving to raise his arse higher in the air. "Thought I'd have plenty of leeway."

"Because you're a stick figure with a haircut?" Michael checks the camera. Good, film's already loaded. David came prepared. "I'm going to enjoy this, I think."

"What's wrong with my haircut?" David demands, but it's upstaged by the swivel of his hips, which seem to emote in the absence of his face. 

Michael pats him on the back of his calf in consolation. He's still wearing his soft flannel pajama bottoms; he'd cooked them breakfast wearing nothing but those and one of Michael's tee shirts. Is he still wearing the shirt, Michael wonders? His hand squirms between the tight space between the rubberized opening of the doggie door and David's belly. Yes, he finds cotton, rucked up and wrinkled beneath him. Good. Wouldn't want him to get chilly against the tiled floor.

David yelps at the brush of his fingers under his stomach. "What are you—?"

"Just trying to help," Michael manages to say with a steady voice. He's very glad David can't see him. He's already chubbed in his boxer shorts, for fuck's sake. "You're right. You're properly stuck, mate. Maybe I should butter you up? Try some oil? Isn't that what they do when kids get their heads caught in banisters?"

"I hate you," David grumbles. 

"No you don't. I'm your only hope of wriggling free, hm?" Michael rearranges himself on one knee beside David, slaps a hand atop one wriggling buttock. Inside, David's cry of shock bounces around the house. 

"Come on, don't—" He tries to scramble away from the touch but there isn't anywhere to go.

"Calm down, I'm only seeing if I can give you a push. Is this helping?" Michael kneads one narrow cheek in his palm, savoring David's jolt.

"You  _ know _ it isn't!" 

There's an edge of hysteria in David's voice that Michael is very proud to witness. He nearly stops his playful torture to compliment him on what he's doing; it's just fantastic. 

But there are only so many hours in a day, and their checkout is 9 a.m. tomorrow, so he figures he'd best be getting on. 

"All right, fine," he sighs. "I'm going to go find a screwdriver or something. We'll get you free if I have to take apart the whole bloody door." He gives David's arse a parting pat. "Stay here, I'll be right back."

"Very funny," David grumbles, sounding more Scottish than he ever has. "Laugh riot, you are."

Michael makes a show of clomping down the patio steps, slippered feet crunching through leaves until he's turned the corner around the house. He waits there a moment. Messes with the camera. Almost wishes he still smoked; he could use one about now. 

Then he takes a deep breath and quietly returns to the back door, where David's backside is still displayed to the wide world.

"So?" David asks. "Find anything useful?"

He stays silent. Reaches down and grabs hold of the stretchy waistband of David's pajamas where it rests against the small of his back. 

"Wh— Stop that! Michael, quit messing around! It's not funny anymore!"

He tugs the pajamas down until they ring David's knees, his bare arse totally exposed now. 

"Michael!" David stills, then says in a frightened little voice, "Michael? Is that you?"

He's silent. This man wouldn't speak, Michael decides. This man who just happens by, sees some poor sod in this position, and thinks, why not? No one can stop him, no one would see. 

He grips David's hips, skinny and warm. He'd said bruises were fine, right? David wanted them, so Michael gives him some, all in a little row along the ridges of his waist, kneading with terrible force. 

"S-stop, please." More squirming, like he can get away if he just tries hard enough. "That hurts, don't—"

The loud smack of Michael's palm surprises even him. But it happens before he can think too much about whether it'll be welcome, a firm crack across David's arse. Handprint all in red. 

"Shut up," he says in a voice that isn't his. "Keep your fucking mouth shut." He thrusts dry fingers between David's cheeks, nudging at him roughly.

"No, no, please, don't do this," David hisses, quieter now. Like he's got his face pressed against the floor. Whispering little pleas against the ground. 

Michael ignores him. Pushes a button on the camera that raises the flash. He slaps David on the arse again, another handprint fading fast. David jolts helplessly at the strike, jolts again at the click of the shutter, the mechanical whir as the Polaroid is spat out.

"Are you—are you taking photos of me?" His voice gets all high and fluttery when he's scared. It's actually very nice. "You can't do that!"

Michael spreads David one-handed to expose his little pink hole dusted in brown fuzz, then takes another picture to wordlessly prove that yes, he can.

"Please, what do you want? Money? I'll give you whatever I have; just leave me alone."

This bloke doesn't want money. He thumbs at the rim of David's hole. Prods at it as it clenches. Yeah, this bloke isn't doing this for money. 

Michael puts down the camera a moment and holds up the two photos. The first is just solidifying into view, David's offered arse, the pink of his skin. The other one's still a light grey. Michael puts them off to the side in a neat line. He slips a hand into the pocket of David's puddled pajamas and finds the well-squeezed tube waiting for him there. 

He makes a grunt of discovery as if to say, _well, what have we here?_ _The little slut comes prepared._

David's squirming reaches fever pitch. "No, that's mine, you can't— Put that back."

Michael uncaps the tube. Loudly. 

David stops squirming.

He seems to have lost all hope of remaining unmolested, instead giving a helpless whimper, going slack under Michael's gaze. Still, he flinches at the first wet touch of Michael's lubed forefinger, gives a sorry little cry as it forces its way deeper and deeper and just lodges there. Micheal picks up the camera and takes a photo of it: David's hole taking one finger to the knuckle. A red flush creeping across the bare skin at the small of his back.

The new Polaroid joins the neat line. Oh, Michael likes the triptych they make. Unholy glee bubbles in him at the thought that at the end of the roll of film, he'll have a sort of picture book that tells the story of how he fucked David's arse in broad daylight.

He takes a quick look at their surroundings, suddenly conscious of how exposed they are. The house is in the middle of nowhere, no neighbors for a mile, and even if someone were to trundle up the unpaved lane, there's no clear view of the garden from the road. There's hedges, too, ringing the grass. Not impenetrable, sure. Someone could see if they walked up. But who would, and why? 

Michael wonders if that's why David chose the place. If he's wanted this from the beginning, thought about it while they fucked in the shower or ate lunch at the kitchen island. Earlier, when he was poring over the listings on the rental website, reading glasses perched on his nose. The thought makes Michael twist his finger a little deeper.

David gasps.

Michael is two fingers deep into him before he can think about it. The noises David's making, by turns quiet and pathetically loud, a keening moan pressed into the tile floor inside the door, where Michael can't see. He wonders what sort of face David is making at this, if he's bothering to involve that in their little playacting or if it's just his voice. Michael's never been ever to do a voice divorced from a facial expression; one follows the other. He likes to think David is the same. That his mouth is open and smearing against the floor, that there's real fear and excitement in his glazed eyes.

"Please," he's whimpering from behind the shut door. "Please don't..." 

But again, he's saying one thing, doing another. His ass is shoving itself onto Michael's fingers, seeking the hard line of his cock where it's tenting Michael's shorts. Michael's a bit worried for his waist. As trim as David is, he's going to rub himself raw, the way he's juddering back and forth in the tight space.

David wriggles again. "Those photos, you can't—"

"Be good," Michael grunts as he slips his fingers free. "And maybe I won't share them with anyone else."

David stills. When he speaks his voice is tearstained. "You wouldn't."

Another hard, sudden smack of Michael's palm against his ass, another high cry. 

"I said. Shut. Up." Michael gets his cock out. Slick and rubbing where it wants to be. 

"All right. All right." David goes slack and pliant again. "I'll be quiet."

Michael reaches through the dog door, squeezing his hand between the frame and David's belly, grabbing a handful of his soft, worn tee shirt. He yanks it with a huff, feigning brutality, but what he really wants is to pull it down and hold it in place so David isn't too uncomfortable. So he won't bruise his slight hips on the edge of the opening.

It has the added benefit of dragging David ever so slightly back onto Michael's cockhead.

He's fucked David enough times by now, fucked him in this very position even (minus the door, obviously), that he knows what angle is best to give it to David deep. Knows the amount of force that David likes feeling, the firm slap against his arse, the backs of his thighs. The speed that gets him keening. 

It's a bit awkward, getting it all right. Michael braces a palm against the door as he fucks his way into David's tight body, revels in the shudder the wood gives with every thrust. David is jolted too, helpless and trapped just as he's asked to be. 

"No more," he gasps, "pictures. Not of this."

Michael sacrifices his steadying hand to fumble with the camera again, snaps a photo straight down at where David's wet hole is clenched around his prick. 

"No," David whispers. The protests are half-hearted at this point. Resigned. Michael can picture his slack face pressed to the tile inside. Tears dripping to the floor. "Please."

Michael places the last developing Polaroid with the others and starts fucking in earnest now. He holds onto the hem of David's shirt and goes for it. 

The angle forces David even closer to the ground, belly near flat on the stones that make up the back garden patio. His hips, by contrast, are canted as high in the air as they'll go, held there with bruising force by Michael's hands. His hard cock is wagging, wet and thick, between his legs; Michael can hear its slap against the stone walkway when he fucks into David. He trails one hand down, gets a grope in, fondles David's heavy balls. 

"Ah!" The sound is the perfect mix of shame and arousal. "You're— I'm—"

Michael gets it, he does. Sort of. He's confessed his own penchant for feeling a bit used, a bit debauched every so often. This whole concept might seem a little ridiculous, but what isn't? When it comes down to it, it's not surprising: David likes being fucked with something like a threat hanging over him, likes being able to pretend that it's not his fault, what's happening to him. That he's being toyed with, held down and made to take it. That it's out of his control. He doesn't have a face, doesn't have a name, and it doesn't matter. 

He's nothing but a warm hole.

Michael groans at the thought and buries himself deeper.

He's not going to last. It's ludicrous; he's come off more in the last few days than is strictly necessary at his age. But still, he's right there on the edge, even after all that. He slows the pace, but it's a losing battle. He can feel it roiling in his belly and he won't be able to stop it.

David must be able to sense it in his movements. He stiffens under Michael's touch, spine curving so that the knobs of his vertebrae rise under his skin.

"Don't," he says (like he always does). "Don't come inside me, please."

It's become almost a pavlovian response for Michael at this point. He shoves his cock in as far as it can go, smashing into David and pinning him near-flat on the ground. Coming in him silently in huge, leaping pulses. The harshness of his breathing the only noise, save for the birdsong in the woods beyond the garden hedge.

He manages to pull out quickly enough to spurt one last jet of come on the concave small of David's back, watching the rest trickle from his hole. And then he's pressing back in, grunting, fucking his come as deep as it will go before his prick goes soft. David is wild underneath him, writhing like an animal. Michael can hear the screech of his fingernails scrabbling at the tiles inside, can hear him sobbing out his breaths. 

"No, it's too much." Panting like a dog. "Please, I'm so close. It's too much."

Michael is dizzy from the force of his orgasm and from the frantic clench of David around his cock. He pulls out with a wet squelch, gives David's bare ass another smack, weaker than the last, and grabs the camera for one last photo: David's bottom marked with his come.

"Please," David is saying as the camera spits out the square of film. He cants his hips higher, searching. 

Michael takes the photo between his fingers and waves it lazily through the air. It's already taking shape. 

"Please— Whoever you are, you cannae just leave me like this!"

Michael reaches for David. Pries his wet arse cheeks apart with one hand to expose his leaking hole.

"Yes," David gasps. "Please."

Michael releases him, lets his cheeks fall back into place. And then— then he slots the Polaroid there like a jaunty calling card.

"Wha—?" David must realise what he's done after a beat, because that sort of horror can't be faked. "Get that off of me, don't—! You can't leave that there!" 

Michael grabs a handful of what turns out to be mostly the back of David's thigh, gives it a parting squeeze. Tucks himself away, clomps down the stone pathway.

"Hey!" David calls after him. "Don't— please!"

Michael doesn't smoke anymore, but he gives himself about the same amount of time as a cigarette would, waiting in the shade at the side of the house. Enough time for a Polaroid to develop, perhaps.

Enough time to come back to himself. Get his breathing under control. Get back in his own head. 

By the time he returns to the back garden, David is positively shaking. His cock, leaking a small puddle on the stones, hangs heavy under his body. He's a wreck from the waist down, just as Michael left him.

"David?" he says, letting all the real concern he feels suffuse his voice. His actual voice. "My God, what's happened to you?"

David babbles, by turns pleading for Michael not to look at him and to help him (presumably with looking along for the ride). He jams himself backwards and forwards in the tight space of the dog door, hard enough that Michael worries again for skin at his hips.

"Here, let me— Jesus." He kneels at David's feet. Plucks the photo from David's ass. Stares at it, his spent dick giving an aftershock throb at the sight. It's terribly filthy, even though it's a sight he's already seen. "David, are you all right?"

"I need to come, please," he says, high and needy. "He left me like this. I've been so close for so long, I can't—"

"All right, all right." His hand wraps around David's wet prick. "I've got you. It's all right." 

"I need you to—" David makes a close, frustrated sound, like his forehead is pressed against the tile floor and his mouth is millimeters from it. "'m too empty, please."

"David, mate...." Michael manages to sound unsure. Like he's got plenty of qualms about treating David like his own personal toy made for for fondling and fucking. "You sure?"

David cries, "Yes I'm sure!" 

Every inch of his bare skin flushed red. Arching into Michael's hand on his prick, his hips simultaneously pressing back in search of more touch. 

Michael gives it to him. Slides two fingers inside his soaked arsehole, easy with all the come lubing the way. Holds them there for David to fuck himself on. Makes a tunnel of his fingers for David's cock to fuck. 

"Yes yes yes," he chants as he comes.

Michael strokes him through it and wishes he could see the expression on his face. It's David's ask, though, so he lets him enjoy it. 

"Fuck, you're gorgeous," he breaths while watching David shudder, because it's true. Even just the back half is a great view. 

David whispers his name. Bless him, he's boneless and sagging now, his stomach flopped over the lip of the dog door and only moving with his panting breath. 

"Come on." Michael tugs at David's hip. "Shimmy out. I want to see you." Want to hold you, he doesn't say. 

"Told you." David's voice is a broken reed. "Actually. Quite stuck."

A beat. "Wait, really? You're actually stuck in there?"

"Said so, didn't I?"

Michael nearly tears his hair out. "But I didn't think you were serious! Why didn't you tell me?" He scrambles to his feet. "Lord, now I have to find an actual bloody screwdriver."

David laughs at that. "Didn't want you to stop." His hips give a weak wiggle. "Was nice. Or, well, just how I wanted it."

Michael pulls David's soft flannel pajamas back over his bottom, heedless of the mess, only concerned about David's modesty, which is ironic, considering. "I'll be quick. You just—"

"Stay here?" David says helpfully.

Michael swats him a good one before rushing off to find the toolkit in the garage.

In the end, he doesn't need to take the door off the hinges—which, he realizes, wouldn't actually do much to solve the problem. Instead he unscrews the rubberized frame of the doggie door so that David has another inch or so of literal wiggle room, and with some creative pushing and pulling, they manage to free him. David is bright red by the time he pulls his legs inside, flopped across the tile floor and looking every bit the blissful, fucked-out slag he is. He watches with a dreamy smile as Michael does his level best to screw the frame back into place, difficult when the thin strip of vulnerable skin at David's waist is showing.

"Help me up, will you?" David murmurs. "Let's have a lie-down."

Michael negotiates a shower and a scrub first. Then they're in bed, David stretched out and burrowed into Michael's side. The Polaroids are there too; Michael wouldn't be so lax as to leave them behind. They're arranged in a pile on his stomach, where David can idly flip through them, humming in appreciation at each tiny, salacious portrait.

"Could anyone even tell it was me, do you think?" he asks into the warm hollow of Michael's throat. He's studying the last one, where he's covered in come. "It's not as if I have a birthmark or anything, do I?"

"I'd know that arse anywhere," Michael says into David's hair. It's not a joke, but it is funny, so they laugh. 

David ends up letting the photograph fall onto Michael's chest, pulls them closer together under the thick duvet. "I've had such a lovely time," he says. He looks up into Michael's gaze. "Did you?"

Michael lets his eyes answer for him, leans down for a kiss that says more than he ever could. It's rather stupid, he realizes, to be gently kissing this man in this room in this transient house. The things they do together, the brief time they have, he shouldn't let on how much it means to him. But if David couldn't already tell what a bloody mess he is over him, then what does one more kiss matter?

David pulls away at the natural tapering end of the kiss, his huge eyes bright and blinking. He seems to consider Michael for a moment. Then he reaches past him, fumbling at the nightstand. The Polaroid camera's in his hand. 

"Shall I?" he asks, already snugging back into the pillows to pose closer to Michael, already holding the black box of it at arm's length and eyeballing the shot. 

"What, just to burn it later with the others?" Michael asks, smiling. 

"You can keep this one," David says, soft and quiet. The flash goes off; the camera clicks and whirs. Michael's not looking at it. He can't stop staring over at David, a beloved profile at his side.

David takes the photo from the slot, places it carefully picture-side-up on Michael's belly. "And this one's for me," he says. He squishes close, cheek to cheek, two idiots grinning, camera raised again. "Smile." 

Michael does. And it's not an act.

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

It's been a busy series of weeks, the both of them going from one project to the next without more than a day of downtime in between. There's been no opportunity to catch up except for texts, the occasional phone call. Which means when Michael and David realize they're going to be in the same city on the same week, they don't waste time in agreeing to meet.

That they're both exhausted goes without saying. David actually arrives, sets down his bags—he's supposed to be in a room three floors above, but oh well—and goes directly facedown on the bed with only the most cursory kiss to Michael's cheek in greeting. He naps for almost two hours. 

Michael uses the time to catch up on his podcasts.

He putters around the suite with his earbuds in, putting David's kicked-off shoes in the closet, neatly aligned with his, stows the suitcase, hangs up the garment bag. It's all hilariously domestic. He toys with the idea of pouring a drink so that when David wakes up, he'll have a nice refresher waiting for him, but that seems a bit much.

Instead he settles himself at the vanity once he's finished tidying. It's an ornate little wrought iron thing complete with a stool done up in watered silk upholstery. The sort of vanity table a starlet would be expected to sit at while dabbing her leaking eyes in a dramatic film. His last podcast is going through the end credits, so he shuts off the sound and takes out the earbuds, gets comfortable on the silk-covered stool, contemplates his face in the mirror, turning this way and that in consideration.

It's not a new interest, this. Makeup had always been part of the job, and he'd played about with it off stage just as a lark when he was younger. Flashy little shit he'd been then, reveling in the attention, the gasps of delight from the women as he walked in. "Michael, darling, your eyeliner looks magnificent!" Hard to tell, really, what one does for the result it produces in others or in oneself.

Michael is old enough not to care at this point. Life is too short, he's decided, not to put on a bit of rouge if he fancies it. Here, alone with David snoring lightly into the duvet, he finds he does.

Michael scratches his fingertips through his beard. It's more neatly trimmed now that shooting is over—that role calls for the thickest face fur, the wildest curls. It's not worth wondering if he'd like to shave it all off; the other thing starts filming next week and calls for at least a nominal beard. The decision isn't his, a minor trade off for the blessing of steady work. He unzips the nondescript black pouch on the vanity and selects a shimmery shadow stick from among the options. No primer. In this particular instance, smudging and running is the desired effect.

He's working diligently on lining his lips to match the lipstick (a pale, pearlescent pink) when David finally stirs. He groans awake like a teenager, flopping onto his back, rubbing at his face, legs splayed wide and arms falling back into starfish formation. Michael watches him in the mirror with an amused smirk.

"Ready to rejoin the land of the living, sweetheart?" he asks with a camp lilt to his voice. 

"God, no. Can't face that just yet." David snorts, deigns to sit up, finally sees Michael at the vanity. "Oh, look at you."

It's said warmly, and though Michael wasn't actually expecting a scoff or a sneer, he still holds the sound to his chest for a moment before finishing up the cupid's bow of his upper lip. 

"Yes, look at me," he says, smiling at his reflection. He flicks his eyes to meet David's in the mirror, reaches for the tube of mascara. "Are you hungry? I could have something sent up." 

David hums in thought, gets to his feet, pads in socks across the room to stand behind Michael's stool. "Maybe later. Unless you're famished? Don't let me keep you from your dinner." His hands find a place on Michael's shoulders, knead there in a gentle massage. Michael pauses in coating his lashes for the moment, leans into the touch. His eyes slip shut but he's certain he's grinning like a pleased cat being scratched behind the ears.

"Oh, you're not keeping me," Michael says. He tips his head back against David's belly in a silent request for a kiss. David bends to place one on his forehead with an apologetic little grunt before stepping away. 

"My breath's like a dead dog right now. Give me a moment," he says as he ducks into the en suite.

Michael watches him go, listens to the water running in the sink, the happy, surprised noise of David discovering his toilette bag is already on the counter. 

You're not keeping me, he'd said, but wouldn't it be lovely if he would. He turns back to the mirror and brushes on the last coat of mascara.

David emerges from the bathroom still mopping water from his face with one of the hotel towels. He drags it down so that only his mouth is hidden, his eyes bright and soft as they catch on Michael again. 

"You really do look lovely," he says, folding up the towel and tossing it back in the bathroom. "Did I tell you that already? I'm still sleep-addled."

"You didn't." Michael preens. "But thank you." The cap goes back on the mascara with a click. He prods at the corner of his eye with the tip of his little finger. In the reflection, he can see David watching very closely. Hm. Isn't that something.

"Would you like me to do you next?" Michael asks, as casual as he can with his heart rate picking up the way it is.

"Oh, I don't think—" David starts, then stops. His gaze dances over the mirror, and Michael wonders what he sees exactly. 

Michael's got a few arguments ready:  _ I've seen you do drag before, you look brilliant; come on, it's quite fun; don't you want to look even prettier? _ But he doesn't need them at all, because David bobs his head finally and says, "Go on, then. But nothing garish, yeah?"

"Wouldn't dream of it," Michael purrs. 

"I just don't want to look like it's a joke," David says in a rush. "I want to look nice. The way you do."

Michael's lips part. He's not sure what his face is doing but it must be some combination of shock at being so thoroughly seen and pleasure at being so thoroughly appreciated. 

"Darling, you're too kind," he manages to say. "Here." He starts to rise from the vanity stool to make room for David, but David stops him with a gesture.

"Wouldn't it be easier for you if I—?" He folds his lanky self and takes a seat on the floor, right at Michael's feet. His face tips up in offering, a perfect canvas. "Does that work?"

"Might do," Michael says, and leans down to get the kiss he'd been denied earlier.

David is soft from sleep, goes willingly where Michael's hand on his chin directs him. He tips up to meet Michael's lazy kiss with a satisfied sound in his throat. 

"I think," Michael says when they part, "blues and golds for the eyes, maybe something darker for your mouth." 

David nods, lets his eyelids fall shut, parts his lips. Trained by hours in makeup chairs to be a perfect, unmoving model. 

Michael hooks a finger into David's open mouth, letting him lick at it. "Yes," he says, "something very red."

The blue is a navy, a tad professional in Michael's opinion, just a bit of it near David's lash line, fading into a sunset of golds and taupes. The blush is hardly necessary; David's pink in the face already. Michael takes his time with it anyway. It's a good kind of intimacy, sweeping the brushes and sticks over skin. Breathing in each other in the small space.

"Just a bit longer," Michael says, moving onto the lipstick. He indulges in this part, thumb on David's lower lip to coax his mouth open another millimeter, pretending he needs to wipe away a stray speck of pigment with the side of his thumbnail when it's perfectly fine. 

"What do you think?" David asks when he at last, reluctantly, caps the tube of deep, deep red.

Michael is wearing one of the plush hotel robes and nothing else, already hardening at the sight of David knelt there at his feet, face made so delicate and sweet by the bit of makeup, but mostly by the desperate look in his eyes. 

"A classic beauty," Michael proclaims. 

David smiles his whole face lighting up with it. He sweeps a lock of hair from his forehead, tucks it back. Whether he means the gesture to look coy and girlish, Michael isn't sure. Part of David's singular charm is his propensity for the girlish, but Michael would never ruin it by pointing that out.

David's hands, which had been folded demurely in his lap throughout the makeover, now rise to cup the backs of Michael's bare calves, rubbing up and down his legs. "I should really apologize," he says.

"What for, pet?"

"Well." David hooks an eyebrow (perfectly filled) upward. "For appearing on your doorstep and falling asleep in your bed without so much as a by your leave."

"Must have needed it." Michael strokes the back of his fingers down David's lightly powdered cheek, hiding his smile. He knows what David is dancing 'round, what he hopes to be "forced" to do, and Michael's keen to see what happens when he doesn't immediately take his place on the stage. Already David's hands are climbing up his legs, skating around his knees, seeking him out the way David's mouth is seeking permission, or rather, orders.

"Still. Awfully rude of me." David swallows. "Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"

"Hm." Michael tips his head to the side, runs a hand through his hair, tosses it as he straightens. "I'm not sure. What sort of thing were you thinking?"

David looks—not disappointed, exactly, but he turns a different shade of red. Not the best at saying what he wants out loud, Michael muses. Well, it's good practice. 

"Go ahead." He nudges David's knee with his toe. "Tell me what you have in mind."

"I could." David ducks his head. The bright color is running down his neck and under his shirt collar. "I thought I might—" His hands creep up the fabric of Michael's robe and latch onto his hips. "If you wanted. Use my mouth. Suck you off?" It's so tentative and high-pitched, Michael melts. 

"Oh," he sighs. "I'm afraid not, pet." He strokes David's face again, takes his chin in his hand. "I wouldn't like to make a mess of your pretty face after all that work I just did."

David looks genuinely hurt for a moment. He draws his hands away from Michael's hips, but Michael tuts at him, drags a hand through his fall of soft hair. 

"Unless," he says, as if the idea has just occurred to him, "I could be persuaded."

David shifts on his haunches. Bites his lip, making a tiny flaw in the lacquer sheen when he speaks, haltingly and with more than a quaver in his voice. "I'm not sure... What should I be doing to persuade you?"

Michael smiles, scratches his blunt nails along David's scalp. "I don't mean to put you on the spot," he says. "I only thought it might be nice to see what you would do, given your druthers."

"Ah." David blinks up at him. "I'm on my own, then?"

"Don't be silly." Michael tugs at his ear. "I'm right here. I'm only curious."

"Right." His hands slip away, go instead to the buttons on his shirt. He starts undoing them, eyes downcast in a way that makes Michael harden further, dirty thing that he is. 

"Well. I suppose I could...." He trails off. So does his crisp shirt, falling to the carpet. "I'm not much for leading; you know that," he says. He scratches at the bare expanse of his chest, through the sparse curly hair. "Maybe I can talk instead. D'you like listening to me talk?"

"It's one of my favorite things," Michael confesses. "Tell me a story, David. Let's have it."

"This is all true," David begins, even as he starts undoing his trousers. "I'm not just saying it, all right? I've honestly been looking forward to seeing you for—God, it's been months, hasn't it? Almost two?" 

Michael nods. Props his elbow on the vanity, props his chin on his knuckles. Lets his knees fall an inch apart, but it doesn't sway David from his tale. He's building up steam now, words coming quicker, firmer.

"When I saw you last—the cabin, the house in the country—I think about it all the time. I'm still thinking about it," David says. "Not just the sex, although, Christ." He squeezes himself through the heather grey wool, a bulge getting larger under Michael's watchful eye. "I think about you, how amazing you are. How you always— It's so good with you, do you know that? And I wonder how I'm going to keep you happy, how I'm going to please you when it's just these little snatches, an evening here or there. I want to please you." He looks up, sheepish and sultry-eyed. "That's probably obvious."

Michael's mouth is completely dry. He can't eke out what he wants to say: that he feels the same, that while it's obvious it's nice to hear aloud, that he could never not be pleased by David and his fantastically filthy inclinations, his sweetly lax body beside his on those rare mornings when they can wake up together. 

David doesn't wait for any response, doesn't seem to expect one. He lowers his zip and slips his hand into his trousers, touches his own cock with a hiss, reaches up with his free hand to pinch at his nipple.

"So," he says breathlessly, "that's the sort of thing I think about when I'm not with you. When I'm in-between. I play back every detail of the last time, daydream about the next time. I don't know what else to say." His hand picking up speed. The obscene slish-slish of his fist around his cock. "That's the story, I suppose. I just want to feel your hands on me again, all the time. I don't even care how I get it, just please. Can I?"

Michael sucks in a breath.

It's very difficult to say no to David. Still— 

"Let me watch you play with yourself a bit more first," he says, steady as he can. "I'm very much enjoying that." 

Just as he'd thought, the bright flush is back, David bowing his head like a chastised child.

"Do I have to keep talking?" he whines as he grinds against his hand. "Not sure I can, to be honest."

"Up to you." Michael ignores his cock twitching under his robe. "But I do think you sound delicious."

"Arsehole," David says, teeth showing in his affectionate grin. "You know that'll make me keep at it, then, even if it makes me feel like crawling under a rock, even if I can't bloody stand it."

"I know nothing of the kind," Michael protests. 

"You do." David groans. His head tips back. "And you know I love it as much as I hate it."

"You love to hate it," Michael corrects him, and it's a question in a way. He would never want David to be truly unhappy with their little games, and for some reason this one, as low as the stakes are, feels more fraught with feeling. He raises his brows, hoping for an answer.

David wags his head, pinching his other nipple now, eyes shut in bliss. "I do. Doth protest too much and all that. Sometimes I wish I were more like you, and I could just..."

"Wear it with pride?" Michael suggests, and David nods again.

"I can pretend, of course, but it's just an act." He's panting now, curling in on himself, a squiggle of a line at Michael's feet. "You—you're honestly—" He stutters even as his hand moves faster.

"A right slut?" Michael laughs.

"No," David says sharply, his head snapping up. His eyes are dark and clouded with something Michael can't name. "Don't make a joke out of it. Please. I'm trying to say you're a fucking  _ vision _ ."

The smile slips from Michael's face. "Sorry. For making light." He shifts forward on the stool, strangely sober now. "I just wish you could see yourself. That's you. From where I'm sitting, that's you."

David gives a hiccuping sob. "Please, I'm close but I don't want to finish, not by myself."

"Of course, pet, you did so well." Michael sweeps off the silk-covered stool, wrapping his robe tighter around his body, taking David by the hands to pull him, shaking, to his feet while his trousers gape open at the flies. "Let's get you laid out, hm?"

David murmurs quiet thank yous and are you sures as Michael shushes him, arranges him on his back on the bed, pulls his trousers and socks off with his pants. 

"I could have tried to last longer," David whimpers at one point, nosing to the side into the pillow. 

"It's all right," Michael says, "I don't want to go another minute without touching you."

"Mmm." David inhales with his nose still buried in the pillow. "Smells like you here. 'S why I got to sleep so fast." He looks up at Michael, all glazed, made-up face radiant. "Helps to feel like you're close."

Michael doesn't know what to say to that. Maybe it's just the dress up, making David act like this, saying such sweet things without any compunction, no agenda. He gives him a kiss, their slick mouths slotting together.

"You going to fuck me?" David asks when they part. His gaze drops down to the shadowed space in the V where Michael's robe is hiding his chest. "I've never...been with another girl before."

Michael falls onto David's neck, pressing a groan into hot skin. "How are you always so perfect?" he asks.

"You make it easy." David's smile is blinding. He raises his hands over his head, presenting the most enticing picture he can, surely. "Will you show me how? I want to be good for you."

Michael has never in his life played a lesbian, but he's willing to try.

He rests his weight atop David, relishing the feeling of being at least somewhat clothed against the length of him, wriggling and naked. He's careful to sweep the fall of hair from David's made-up eyes, to watch them widen in innocent anticipation. His lipstick is barely smudged from their kiss, a testament to Michael's skill in applying it. He trails his fingertips along the curve of David's throat and down to where his collarbones stand out as open gates above his chest.

"Can I?" he asks in a voice that's softer, sweeter than his natural one. 

David's pupils grow fat and round. He arches his spine so that his chest is thrust upward for Michael's touch.

"Oh please," he whispers, and Christ, he sounds just like a girl. "Please."

There's barely an ounce of fat on him, of course, but Michael does his level best to gather up a palmful of flesh, squeezing at David's chest and flicking his middle finger over the nipple trapped there. He watches every twitch of David's face for any sign of pain, but it's so hard to tell. David's wet mouth and begging eyes could be pleasure, could be the opposite.

"Is this all right?" Michael asks. "I don't want to hurt you."

David arches up against him more in answer. "You haven't," he gasps out. "You couldn't. Is—is it really better with a girl?" He's got blushing while offering up his bosom like a buffet down to an art. "I've heard it is. Better than with boys, I mean."

"Oh, my sweet lass." Michael licks the flat of his tongue over David's red, aching nipple, listening to his high whimper. "Have the boys been very rough with you?"

"Sometimes." There's a little catch in his voice.

Michael lowers his head again to murmur into the tiny valley of David's chest. "I don't like that. Mistreating my girl. Do you want me to have a word with them?"

"N-no, it's my own fault, really." David goes boneless beneath him, pliant and soft. When Michael glances up at him, he sees his eyes shut tight, darkened lashes fanned on his pink cheeks. "I— I let them do it. I know I shouldn't, I know it's wrong." He opens his eyes. Fucking hell, there's tears. "You probably don't want to kiss me anymore, now that you know."

Michael crawls up to press his mouth as forcefully as he can against David's slack lips, swallowing his thrilling little moan. His long arms loop around Michael's shoulders, keep them close together. He can feel the tremble in David's breathing, the pulse of his cock between their bellies. 

The kiss ends with a hard suck to David's plump lower lip. "I'll never stop wanting to kiss you," Michael breathes. "I don't care how many boys get to fuck you. You're still mine, understand?" 

David nods so hard a tear slips free and runs mascara-black down to his chin. 

Michael stares at it. Something claws in his chest. He's saying too much. The game is getting all blurred.

"Hey," he says, firmer, deeper. "If you'd rather we not go through all this, we could just keep it simple."

"Don't you dare stop," David chokes out in his thready, girlish accent. "Please, I need you to—" And he surges up against Michael, kissing him as thoroughly as Michael had kissed him. 

That settles that, then. Michael holds him close, takes control of the kiss. Slips back into his role like putting on a soft old jumper. He returns his attention to David's chest, slipping downward to bite at his cherry red nipples, suck at the taut skin. 

"Fuck, you taste so good," he says.

David's hands flutter along his back, encouraging. "They're not as nice as yours," he murmurs. "I wish I was more...developed. Like you."

Michael nearly laughs into David's skin. The way he'd said it was just so prim and perfect. "You're jealous of my tits?" He sits up, straddling David's narrow hips, and shrugs the robe off his shoulders. He cups himself in two hands, grinning like a madman. "Honestly?" 

"Well..." David looks up at him bashfully. "A bit. But maybe I just thought I was jealous when really I can't stop staring at them. The way you fill out your clothes." He matches Michael's cheeky grin. "Can I suck on them?"

"Ooh, bet you don't get to do that with the boys, eh?" Michael wiggles an eyebrow. "All right, since you asked nicely. Here." 

He leans over David's prone form and feeds him a nipple right into his mouth. David latches onto it like he's starving for it, sucking away with those high pitched little noises. His hands roam the expanse of Michael, skating through his chest hair, feeling him up. It's mad, is what it is, but Michael loves it. He shifts so that David can mouth at his other nipple, their hard pricks jolting together where they're crushed close. The belt of the robe finally gives up its knot, and Michael tosses the thing aside so they can lay skin to skin.

"You're very good at that." Michael watches David's huge eyes lift up to meet his, his nipple still held between those soft, red lips. "Were you telling me a lie when you said you'd never done this with a girl before?"

David releases Michael's flesh with a soft pop. "No! It's the truth. Only—" He shifts on the sheets, glances away. "I have thought about it a lot."

Michael hums. "I see. Something nice to daydream about? Maybe while those rough boys were having you?" 

David's blush answers for him. "And when I'm alone. Sometimes." 

Michael takes a shaky breath. His hips urge forward, grinding against David's slight weight. "This is going to be so much better than that," he promises. Kisses David on the tip of his nose, his lips. "Open your legs for me, pet. There's a good girl." 

David's already rushing to comply, his long legs spreading underneath Michael, his hands folded meekly against his spit-slick chest. "What are you going to do with me?" he asks.

What an excellent question. Michael honestly doesn't have an answer, not in the long term. For the moment though....

"I'm going to play with your little pussy," he whispers. "Get you nice and wet. Treat you like you ought to be. Come on, open up." This, with the tap of his fingers at David's lipstick-stained mouth.

David lets him in easily everywhere, it seems, because his lips part and he sucks on Michael's fingers, soaking them all over.

Once he's satisfied that his fingers are wet enough, Michael pulls them out of David's mouth and reaches down between them, under David's tight bollocks, back to his hole. He's not going to do much, not without lube, but he rubs his slick fingertips over the clenching muscle, dips just the tip of his thumb inside, listens to David as he cries out, shuddering beneath him.

"You're still so tight," he says in David's hot ear. "Do you not let the boys in here?" 

David's beyond words, producing only desperate sounds. Michael shushes into his hair, shifts his hips so their cocks align. The friction makes them both gasp. Michael can feel David clamping under his fingers. 

"I'm going to rub off on you," Michael says. "It's one way we girls can do it. It'll feel so good, I promise." 

"It's already so good," David manages to squeak out. His legs part impossibly wider. "Oh, please fuck me."

They should really get some lube into the mix, but Michael doesn't want to stop to find it, afraid that any pause will destroy the perfect, ephemeral coziness that's descended between them. He can't describe it; the closest he can come is comparing it to how it feels to nail a scene, to believe for a moment on some level that the story you're telling is real. The way he and David fit together, breathing together and moving together on the bed—almost real. 

The sweat on their skin is enough to provide a bit of glide. Michael loves the filthy squelch it makes, grins like a naughty kid into the curve of David's neck. His thumb rubs at David's hole in circles. 

"Good?" he asks. 

"Jesus," David breathes.

It shouldn't be enough to get off, this bit of grinding, but they've both been on the edge since Michael did David's makeup. It feels like being a teenager again, Michael thinks, ready to pop at the least touch. 

"Come with me," Michael gasps out. "My darling girl, will you—?" 

"Oh!" David sounds honestly shocked by the force of it, his body going wire-tight against Michael. He comes with his mouth hanging open, great furious jets between their stomachs. Michael can feel David's come dripping down his cock, and that finishes him. It's an orgasm that makes his legs shake, makes his entire brain turn to fuzz for long, staticky moments.

He lays his head on David's galloping chest. It's warm and sweaty, but so is his own brow. He can feel his makeup running. Pleased he'd skipped the primer.

"Oh dear," David says once he can speak through his rapid gasps for air. His fingers rest delicately on Michael's hot cheek, and Michael stares down at him in question. "I've made a mess of your lovely makeup," David says, smiling.

"Mmm. Yours too." Michael drags his fingertip over David's crimson-slashed lips, smudging it even more. "Shower?"

"What's the rush?" David snuggles up against his side, there's no other word for it. Tucks his face into Michael's chest, smearing his eye makeup there. "I could have another nap, if I'm honest."

"Layabout." Michael holds him close. "And they call you the hardest worker in the business."

David only gives a brief snuffle in response.

"Come on," Michael says, jiggling his shoulder. "You really shouldn't sleep in this stuff. Bad for your skin, and you've got such nice skin."

"Five minutes won't kill me," David says, but relents with a sigh, allowing Michael to tug him out of bed and into the en suite.

Michael's in the middle of washing David's face for him with a mild soap, massaging it in clean circles on his cheeks, when David says, "Do you want to keep it simple, then?"

"Hm?" Michael concentrates on rinsing David under the spray. 

"In the middle of that," David gestures to the bedroom door, "you asked me if we should stop with the act, just keep it simple. Is that what you'd like?"

Michael thinks a bit, scrubs David's back for him. "I like a bit of playacting," he says. "It's...exciting. But if it's ever too much for you, or too over the top—"

"It wasn't too much for me," David says. "Was it too much for you?"

This seems a loaded question, and Michael takes care in handling it. He thinks about how the lines had gone fuzzy on him for a moment there. What might happen if he loses the thread. "Not yet, it hasn't been," he says, "but honestly, it might be. Someday."

"Hm." David takes the shampoo bottle from him, spins him around so he can wash Michael's hair. His hands are divine. "Maybe next time we can try that, then. No trappings. Just simple. See how we like it?"

The stutter-stop in Michael's chest is more powerful than the vague promise of future vanilla sex has any right to produce. "Sure," Michael says a beat too late. "Could be nice."

"Close your eyes," David directs as he rinses out Michael's hair, and Michael does as he's told. 

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief word of warning: this chapter deals with Real Life as it is right now, so the coronavirus and subsequent quarantine/self-isolation situation plays a large role. Is writing RPF set in a real global pandemic in poor taste? Probably. Is this entire work in even poorer taste? Absolutely. Feel free to skip it if you'd rather not play in this particular sandbox.

Let's get one thing out of the way right now. 

This sucks. The whole thing, it's absolutely Hell on everyone. His brain keeps trying to make sense of the scale of the pandemic, but it's not a hurricane and it's not a world war and it's not a terrorist attack. There's the staying inside bit, the staying alone bit, the disruption and the not-knowing, and the stress, dear _ Lord _, the stress. It's unending. 

And above all, there is the guilty, self-pitying urge to throw a temper tantrum every few hours whenever Michael is reminded that they had made _ plans _ and now those plans are out the window and bobbing away at sea. It feels stupid to even care about such piddling things at this point, but there it is.

He's only about 150 miles away from David, but he may as well be on the moon for all the fucking good it does them. He tries not to complain—it's nobody's fault, and he doesn't want David to think him a bitter old shit—but it's difficult. The tedious phone calls where they both say nothing except to assure each other that they're safe, that they're well, that they can't believe it's come to this. Nothing of substance, nothing that will ease the tension and the ache deep in Michael's middle. Torture, is what it is.

Still, he can't complain. He won't.

Once the initial shock wears off, a week or so in, they switch to text messages but it's just more of the same. Careful words. Mundane snippets. Once in awhile, some dark humor. 

_ whats the 1st thing youre going to do once you can leave the house? _ Michael texts him one night when the rain is misting outside and the streets are eerily silent. 

_ What makes you think they're ever going to let me out? _ David replies. 

Michael snorts. Writes back, tells David they'll have to; the poor thing won't survive without an audience. _ youll waste away_, he points out.

_ True _ , David says. _ Might start doing scenes from Hamlet in the bay window out front in case someone walks by. _

That leads down a veritable rabbit hole of Shakespearean one-upmanship which leaves Michael laughing where he's sat alone on his sofa, tears streaming down his face. 

He's trying to compose a response when David uncharacteristically beats him to it.

_ Miss you. _

Michael stares at it. David's always so careful around technology. He's never put something like that, even something so innocent, in writing before.

David is typing…

_ April in New York, we said. Seems like ages ago. It's driving me mad, not knowing when we'll next get the chance. _

Michael swallows. He thinks about their conversation, over a month ago now. The plans they'd made to meet, to have boring, plain vanilla sex with no props and no costuming and no script. A half-joke at the time, and it now feels desperately important. It warms him to know David also feels the loss keenly. He takes his time to compose himself, to compose a reply. 

_ Yeah. Me too. _

He thinks about suggesting they video chat, but how could that possibly help? As much as he wants to see David's face, he knows they won't be able to speak freely, not with David's not-unfounded fears of leaving a digital footprint. 

Which is why it's so unexpected when David sends him an actual bloody nude. 

Michael's dozing in the sitting room (time means nothing these days, so why not nap at three in the afternoon?) when his phone pings him awake. He's still half-asleep as he thumbs open the notification. At first, he's not sure what he's looking at. It's from David and it's a photo and that, in itself, is strange. The only photo David's ever texted him, as far as he can remember, was some sunset from when he was traveling. Then his vision sort of focuses on what the photograph actually is and he's half-convinced that he's still asleep and just dreaming.

He stares at the photo. He's not imagining it. It's David. Well, David's dick. He can tell because the hand that's cupping it has David's long fingers, his short, small nails. Michael tilts his head to the side, taking it in. It's actually very artistic; David's captured himself at a lovely angle, lots of valleys and shadows along one hipbone. His cock might not be entirely hard, but it's not the focus of the composition anyway. It's incidental to the shape of his hand and his bare skin. 

After nearly fifteen straight minutes of staring at the thing and wondering how to respond, if at all, Michael receives a followup message from David: _ Did it go through? _

Michael considers replying with a cheeky _ no, resend? _ but in the end decides David doesn't deserve to have the piss taken out of him like that, not when he's clearly telling Michael he meant to send the thing and he's desperate to hear— What? Michael's feedback? 

He decides if David's become this reckless, they might as well talk on the phone instead of through texts, so he hits the call icon and listens to two short rings before David picks up.

"I was _ not _ expecting _ that_," he says, "not from you of all people."

"Is that meant to imply you are expecting it from other people?" David asks. 

Michael waves away the joke. "What's brought this on, then?" 

A series of high- and low-octave vocal exercises comes down the line until David manages to piece together some words. "Yeah, normally terrified of things ending up in the Clouds, whatever _ that _ is. Might be stupid of me, but I reckon everyone's got a lot more pressing things to worry about right now."

Michael smiles. "I've never heard anyone say 'fuck it all' quite so eloquently." He puts in his earbuds so he can talk and look at his mobile at the same time. He isn't above zooming in on the photo, so he does. "It's very good, by the way. Nicely shot. If I didn't know any better I'd say you've done this before."

David's snort is incredibly Scottish. "You don't work as long as I have without learning something about lighting and, and, and angles and such."

"Not just a pretty face," Michael murmurs. Pinches and sweeps with his thumb and forefinger, zooming in further. More than a pretty face, indeed. His cock is downright gorgeous. He realizes he's been silent far too long when David makes a soft, questioning sound that shakes him out of his stupor. "Sorry, still here, just working through the shock. Thought this was a nonstarter for you." 

"Well." His voice is high and tight. There's a rustle on the other end of the line, and Michael thrills to imagine David reclining in bed or some well-blanketed nest. "I was getting...antsy, I suppose."

Michael does the mental math on this before saying slowly, "Are you telling me that while in social isolation you've become so desperate to be objectified that your only alternative was to start sexting me?" 

"You don't have to make it sound so tawdry," he protests.

"Oh, I think I do," Michael laughs. He's still zooming and scrolling. Christ, that hipbone.

"If you don't want to see more, all you had to do was say so," David says in a defensive tone.

Michael sits up straight. "More? Of course I want to see more."

"Only if you show me yours," David says lightly. "I've got to go shower. Apparently I haven't done that today." He rings off without so much as a goodbye. 

Michael is staring at his phone wondering what the Hell just happened when one more text comes in from David. All it says is: 

_ I trust you, is the thing. _

Michael sighs, resists the urge to run his hand down his face. "Right back at you, you little slag," he murmurs, a smile touching his lips. 

So Michael is faced with a task. It feels good to have a task after so many days of not having any. He needs to respond in kind. 

Only….

Who knew it was so fucking difficult to take a decent dick pic?

Michael tries as many angles as he can manage, but no matter how many photos he takes, he still looks like the "before" picture in some mail order catalog for Bowflex or some such nonsense. He tries posing half-clothed, unbuttoned shirt hiding the worst of his shame, but it's just laughable compared to the fucking masterpiece that David had sent him. Right, he thinks, just the dick then—but that proves to be as unfortunate as it is unimaginative. He grimaces as he examines the photos of his hard cock flopped over the edge of his bathroom sink like so many beached whales bloating in the sun. He's damn near to being too disgusted with himself to even attempt the thing again, except David texts him late one night (time: pointless) to say, _ Right. So you're not going to reciprocate, I suppose. _

Michael is in the middle of typing a response after deleting three or four drafts, realizing he's taking much too long to respond, when David sends a follow up: _ I crossed a line; I'm sorry. God, what you must think of me…. Please ignore me, I've obviously gone stir crazy. _

Michael holds down the capslock button on his screen and types a frantic, error-riddled run-on sentence that essentially says ABSOLUTELY NOT. His further typing gets auto-corrected all to hell, so he gives up trying to communicate through the English language, leans back in his armchair, undoes the belt of his robe, holds his mobile at arm's length at what he prays is not the worst selfie angle, and snaps a photo. Full body, face visible. Soft pink cock and bare balls cupped in his hand. 

He tries not to care about how awful he looks, checks about 12 times that he's sending it to the correct person before tossing his ridiculous message in a bottle out to David.

It only takes a few seconds for his phone to buzz: Call from David, his phone supplies helpfully. 

"You're a madman!" David says before any greetings can be exchanged. "D'you know how stupid it is to show— You couldn't even try to deny it if this gets out, look at you! You're grinning like a fucking loon. God in Heaven, what were you thinking?"

"I trust you, is the thing," Michael says, quiet and low. That shuts David up. "I trust you," he says again into the silence. 

He can hear David breathing on the other end. "Right," he finally whispers. "Thank you." 

Michael shifts, tosses the folds of his robe over his lap. "I wish I could—" He stops, tries again. "I wish I knew how to make it better for you. Is there anything—?" 

David's sigh gusts down the line. "You'll laugh," he says.

"I swear I won't."

"It's really silly."

"Sillier than being ass-up in a doggie door?" Michael asks, and David groans. "I love silly," he says when David's quieted down. "Can't get enough of it. Go on."

"Well," David says, drawing out the single syllable into a fucking soliloquy, "we could exchange photos of our cocks in various states of undress and I wouldn't complain. Or we could…."

"Yes?" Michael prompts, mouth dry.

David is quiet for a beat, then says, "Have you heard of this Zoom thing?"

It takes all of Michael's considerable ability not to guffaw into the phone. Leave it to David to wait until a worldwide calamity to finally discover video chatting. "Yes, I believe it's been mentioned a few times in my presence." 

"Oh, shut it. D'you want to give it a go or not?"

"Are you sure you'll be able to handle the sign-up or downloading or whatever process it needs before we—?"

"I'm hanging up on you," David says.

"I wouldn't advise that. I can talk you through it, all right?"

"With a minimum of attitude?"

"I can't promise miracles, David."

There's a muffled laugh, the sound of some shuffling on David's end. "Right, got my laptop, now what do I do?"

"You don't want to just download the app to your mobile?" Michael asks.

"I, er—" 

Realization dawns slowly for Michael. He can picture just how red David must be turning.

"Need those hands free, eh?"

David's voice is high enough to startle dogs, he's fairly sure. "Didn't I tell you to shut it?" Michael laughs, and David adds, barely audible, "Not saying we have to, just thought— The option, that is—"

"You're absolutely right. Dirty, but right," Michael assures him, digs his laptop out of the closet, and together they go through the steps of setting themselves up for a video call.

It takes some time, but at last the call connects and the picture and sound comes in clear. And there is David, grinning widely, showing all his teeth, eyes wide with delighted triumph. He adjusts the hinge of his laptop, throwing himself into a better angle. Michael just drinks it all in.

"You're a sight for sore eyes," he says. "I mean it."

"You too." David leans back, staring at him in turn, mouth slightly open like he can't believe it. He's wearing his glasses, which should not be sexy but is, and seems to be laying on his side. He's only visible from the shoulders up, but those shoulders are bare. Behind him, Michael can make out what seems to be a pillow. 

"Where are you?" he asks.

"Bed. You?"

"Hold on." Michael scoops up his laptop and walks from his study to the bedroom. "I'll join you." 

They would never categorize it as giggling, what they do while they're getting situated, but that's exactly what it is, breathless and punchdrunk. By the time Michael gets himself calmed down, he's shucked the bathrobe and is mirroring David's posture on the screen, the light from his screen the brightest thing in the room. 

He watches David for awhile without feeling the need to say anything. David is, as he's always been, very pleasing to watch. Willowy and trim, a touch of age around his eyes and in the corners of his mouth where he's still smiling. The fall of his hair and the stubble on his chin, the way that his freckles show this close to the camera. 

Michael runs his fingertips through his own thick beard. "You've stopped shaving too?"

"Mmm, yeah." David's palm scrapes against his raspy cheek. "Did it the first few weeks, just for the routine of it, but seemed ridiculous to keep it up. No one's going to see me anyway." He removes his glasses and sets them down somewhere out of frame.

"Except for me, of course."

"Of course." David reaches forward and for a strange, tilted moment, Michael wonders if he's trying to reach for him. But no, he's just pushing his laptop back a bit. The view now includes a tantalizing glimpse of David's chest, dusting of hair and all. Michael's not been this affected by mere toplessness since he was a teenager. He watches, transfixed, as David's long, nimble fingers stroke idly over his sternum. He would say it was contrived, but something about David makes that impossible to believe.

"This is kind of nice," David says, settling in. "Wish I'd mentioned it sooner." 

"I thought about it," Michael confesses. He rubs at the corner of his eye with the knob of his wrist to spare his hand. "Was worried you might kick like an angry horse."

David's smile spreads slow across his soft face. "Well, we all contain multitudes, I suppose." 

"Thank goodness for that," Michael breathes.

He realizes that they're both laying in bed, naked, curled toward each other and speaking quietly in the dark. It's not exactly what he'd had in mind, but it's as close as they can get to boring, thrilling, stripped-down intimacy. They watch each other from their laptop screens, careful not to look away.

David sighs, pillows his cheek on his arm. "I can almost pretend you're really here with me," he says.

Michael makes a noise of assent, tracks the movement of David's fingertips as they continue to travel up and down the center of his chest in lazy swipes. "When this is all over…" he says.

"Yes?" David shifts closer.

"I hope you know," Michael says, "that we will definitely have the gentlest, least interesting sex of our lives. And I am very much looking forward to it."

David's laugh sparkles out of him like he's genuinely shocked, genuinely pleased. "Same here, if I'm honest." 

They stare at each other a bit more. Michael can feel the anticipation building in his gut, but he waits for David. Seems like he's been waiting for David for quite some time; may as well keep at it.

"In the meantime," David finally says. His small, pink tongue swipes at his lips. "You could, ah, talk me through it? What we would do, I mean. If we could."

Michael feels a stab of regret in his chest. It's not fair that they've been reduced to dirty talk over a pixelated video chat. He'd wanted to do this right. Sweetly. He settles into the silkiness of his bedclothes and imagines it's David's bare skin against his. 

"Would you mind if I get a bit maudlin?" he asks. "Because honestly right now I just want to hold you."

David's breath catches, and his eyes dart up to Michael's, having drifted only slightly lower. "Oh," he says. The hand at his chest skates further down and out of sight. "No—I mean, I don't mind. Please."

Michael takes a deep breath. Puts his ego to one side. And launches into a barely coherent, whispered monologue about what he would do if he could touch David. It's stuff so cliched he could cry, but for some reason, he doesn't care. He tells David how he would kiss him (repeatedly) and how he would arrange him (beneath, missionary, exotic in its ordinariness) and what he would say ("You're beautiful like this. You're beautiful always.") 

He notices that David's free hand does not reappear, knows from the steady movement of his bare shoulder that he must be touching himself, feels it confirmed by the glazed look taking over David's eyes, the slack pinkness of his mouth. Michael reaches down and touches himself almost as an afterthought, only because if they were doing what Michael is talking about doing, then by now his cockhead would be nudging against David's wet hole and he'd have opened him up on his fingers. 

David moans at that, lifts his head off his arm so he can shove his fingers into his mouth and suck them soaked. Michael murmurs his approval. "Go on, pet. Get yourself ready for me. Slow, like I'd do for you." 

The camera jiggles a bit. David laughs breathlessly; apparently he'd knocked the computer with his knee. When he gets everything back into focus, Michael can see him laid there with his cheek pressed into the duvet, his shoulders rounded forward, his arms making a long V that disappears out of frame. From the way he's moving and the noises he's making, it's clear David is doing exactly what Michael told him to do. 

"Talk to me, darling," he says. "How many fingers deep are you?"

"One." David takes a shaky breath. "I can add another?"

"No rush." Michael strokes himself with deliberate care. "You're doing wonderfully."

The flush reaches all the way from David's cheeks to his taut nipples. "D'you want me to, ah, move the camera down a bit? So you can see—?" 

"I only need to see your face," Michael says. "That's all I need."

David's eyes flutter open, warm and brown and awash with lust. "Are you—? Please tell me you're also—" 

"Can't help it, can I? Touching myself, thinking about you. God, I want to be in you."

A strangled cry leaves David's lips. His eyes slip shut, he turns his face into the bed, the bridge of his nose meeting the linen. 

"Two fingers now?" Michael guesses.

"Yeah." David swallows, pants into bedclothes. "Want it to be you, too." 

"Don't look away, pet. Show me that gorgeous face." 

David turns to face the screen again, blinking. His eyes are damp at the corners. "Michael—" His voice is a wreck.

"I'm there too, I'm right there with you." And he is. So close.

David's arm moves rapidly, then he stills, his mouth making a perfect round O, his eyes squeezed shut. "Oh, fuck." Michael can see the orgasm coursing through him, the pulses leaving their mark, leaving him shivering, groaning out a lungful of air.

He opens his eyes to watch Michael, and Michael comes into his fist. He throws his head back and lets it wash over him, not realizing until that moment how much he needed this, how much he'd tamped everything down inside. It's rapture to let it all go.

"God, I love you," he says in the middle of it, and he can't even think about what it means to have said it out loud, or whether David can even hear him. Can't think at all until his breathing returns somewhat to normal, and he opens his eyes to find David staring back at him, slack-jawed and blinking.

Ah. So he did hear.

A thousand excuses spring to mind. Heat of the moment, that sort of thing. He opens his mouth to use them, but no words come out. Instead he snaps his mouth shut. And just smiles. 

As wide and as pleased as he can.

David eventually smiles back at him, tentative and wane. "That was—" he begins to say, then shakes his head.

You don't have to say it back, Michael wants to tell him. You don't have to say anything. I'd never ask you to. 

"Could make this a regular thing," Michael says instead. "If you're up for it?"

"I don't know. Let me check my diary," David drawls. "Might be difficult to fit it in."

Michael laughs. Wipes his wet hand against his thigh to cover how dejected he is at what he perceives as a brush-off. "Right."

"Of course I'm up for it. Are you daft?" David grins, more sure now. "I was about to say that was brilliant, only you interrupted me."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. All for scheduling the next wank."

They stare at each other some more, their flushes receding, their chests slowing down from their heavy breathing. 

Don't say it, Michael thinks. Not when I can't hold you. 

"Well." He checks his bare wrist. "You need to sign off? It's quite late." 

"Would you mind if—?" David looks off to the side, then swings his gaze back with a hint of bravado in his eyes. "If you're not busy, maybe you could do me a favor."

"Anything," Michael says, and means it.

"Read to me?" David shrugs, self-deprecating. "I've not been sleeping very well. Got hold of an old audiobook you did once—the Romantics? That seems to help, but I've cycled through it twice already."

Michael's heart fills to bursting. If he hadn't already blurted out how he felt, he's sure he'd do it now. "My voice helps you fall asleep?" He lets it fall into a deeper register. "It would be my honor. Any requests?"

"Whatever you've got at hand. Phone book, Bible. Well." He pulls a face. "Maybe not the Bible."

"Noted. Get cozy, then." Michael rummages in the drawer of his bedside table, one eye on the screen where he catches a flash of David's pale bum as he slips under the sheets and props the laptop on the pillow next to his head. "Okay." He opens the book and begins to read while David's eyes droop shut, a smile hovering on both their lips.

"'It was a nice day. All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet…'"

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> You can find me [@triedunture](https://twitter.com/triedunture) on Twitter.


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